Ezra Klein: “The world desperately wants to loan us money“
[Ten-year Treasurys are] negative. Negative! The market will literally pay us a small premium to take their money and keep it safe for them for five, seven or 10 years. We could use that money to rebuild our roads and water filtration systems. We could use that money to cut taxes for any business that adds to its payrolls. We could use that to hire back the 600,000 state and local workers we’ve laid off in the last few years.
Or, as Larry Summers has written, we could simply accelerate payments we know we’ll need to make anyway. We could move up maintenance projects, replace our military equipment or buy space we’re currently leasing. All of that would leave the government in a better fiscal position going forward, not to mention help the economy.
The fact that we’re not doing any of this isn’t just a lost opportunity. It’s financial mismanagement on an epic scale.
Milos Forman: “Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close“
When I was asked to direct One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, my friends warned me not to go anywhere near it. The story is so American, they argued, that I, an immigrant fresh off the boat, could not do it justice. They were surprised when I explained why I wanted to make the film. To me it was not just literature but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not.
Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.
… Whatever his faults, I don’t see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama or, thankfully, signs of that system in this great nation.
James McGrath: “Don’t Let the Fact That Paul’s Letters Are Now Christian Scripture Undermine Their Message and Authority“
Paul, in his time, made a case for relaxing Scriptural stipulations about the need for anyone within Abraham’s household to be circumcised in order to be part of the covenant (Genesis 17:9-14). He did the same with regard to the people of God being called to observe the things written in the Law of Moses, i.e. Scripture as it existed in his time. When he did so, he himself could not simply declare his own writings Scripture so that it was Scripture against Scripture. He made his case, as well as he could. Later, the largely Gentile church which benefited from his case elevated his writings to the status of Scripture as a result.
It would therefore completely miss, even undermine, the point of Paul’s letters to now say, as Paul’s opponents did in his time, “You can’t include those people in the people of God — that’s contrary to Scripture!” For the whole thrust of Paul’s writings has as its central pillar the conviction that God can enlarge his people and be still more inclusive than he had been in the past, even if it means setting aside commands that he had previously given to his people.
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