Here’s another great debunking of the CRA-caused-the-meltdown myth that keeps rearing its head.  My favorite part:

[T]he CRA didn’t force mortgage companies to offer loans for no money down, or to throw underwriting standards out the window, or to encourage mortgage brokers to aggressively seek out new markets. Nor did the CRA force the credit-rating agencies to slap high-grade ratings on packages of subprime debt.

Second, many of the biggest flameouts in real estate have had nothing to do with subprime lending. WCI Communities, builder of highly amenitized condos in Florida (no subprime purchasers welcome there), filed for bankruptcy in August. Very few of the tens of thousands of now-surplus condominiums in Miami were conceived to be marketed to subprime borrowers, or minorities—unless you count rich Venezuelans and Colombians as minorities. The multiyear plague that has been documented in brilliant detail at IrvineHousingBlog is playing out in one of the least-subprime housing markets in the nation.

Third, lending money to poor people and minorities isn’t inherently risky. There’s plenty of evidence that in fact it’s not that risky at all. That’s what we’ve learned from several decades of microlending programs, at home and abroad, with their very high repayment rates. And as the New York Times recently reported, Nehemiah Homes, a long-running initiative to build homes and sell them to the working poor in subprime areas of New York’s outer boroughs, has a repayment rate that lenders in Greenwich, Conn., would envy. In 27 years, there have been fewer than 10 defaults on the project’s 3,900 homes. That’s a rate of 0.25 percent.

On the other hand, lending money recklessly to obscenely rich white guys, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Bros. or Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, can be really risky. In fact, it’s even more risky, since they have a lot more borrowing capacity.

Not only do they have more borrowing capacity, but my guess is that most poor people think they are morally obligated to pay back the debt they incur.  I doubt the titans of capital that run these banks — rational actors that they are — have any such scruples.  Go read the whole thing.

A while back, I posted a thread on Maureen Dowd’s reading of Obama through the lens of Jane Austen.  Last week, Stephen Colbert, with the help of Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt, offered this Shakespearean read of McCain, casting him in the role of Macbeth.   Enjoy:

You think the presidential race has taken a nasty turn? Get a load of this brutal mailer sent out by Maricopa County Supervisor Fulton Brock, who accuses his opponent, Ed Hermes, of–are you sitting down?–living with his parents. It gets worse:

(View the full image here.)

That’s the title of this interview in Scientific American with a social pyschologist, Chen-Bo Zhong, who explains why we use certain metaphors to describe certain feelings–because, he says, we are describing the way we actually feel. (Or is it the other way around?) Hence the subhead of the piece, “Why Loneliness Feels Cold and Sins Feel Dirty.” In fact, cleanliness IS next to godliness. (Or is it the other way around?)

Anyway, why post this? Perhaps it could have some relevance to a linguistic analysis of tonight’s debate, or to the words we use in religious discourse. Or maybe it’s just interesting–even if it makes my brain hurt. That won’t, of course, stop me from having my students read it for the next class…

Via ALDaily

McCain and Palin are behind in the polls and checking Mapquest every day for the lowest road in the region. The campaign has made it clear they want to dirty up Obama in the stretch, and Tuesday night’s debate should be a test of whether McCain will bring that tactic into the open, with Obama a few feet away. But the pair of “mavericks” aren’t pulling punches in the run-up. Here is McCain on Monday, and Palin’s comments to the Times’ William Kristol today were pretty straightforward. (As was this rally speech, where she concedes she reads the Times! Though only for effect. Like she reads the Economist!) This AP analysis wonders whether it will backfire. Experience tells me it could work. Many feel McCain has permanently sullied his once-estimable reputation, but that all would be forgotten if he wins. It’s a big “if.” So who is the real John McCain? Will his (and her) strategy pay off? Will it do lasting damage? Or will bygones be bygones? And is Palin making her case for 2012–or the first flight back to Anchorage? I think the electorate is more volatile than I can remember, so who knows what will happen. Much like the stock market.

From the AP:

Hurricane Ike’s winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

From Brad DeLong.

Diocesan newspapers are fond of accusing the mainstream news media of bias, and at times they are right. But what about the diocesan papers?

I’d like to ask if your diocesan newspaper is reporting fairly on the presidential campaign. Or has it strongly suggested through its choice of stories, headlines, photos, story placement, editorials and columns that one candidate is preferred?

The question is prompted by a Sept. 29 Catholic News Service story that leads my local Catholic paper, Brooklyn’s Tablet,  this weekend under the headline Dems May Be `Party of Death.’  The story quotes Raymond L. Burke, former archbishop of St. Louis and now prefect of the Vatican court, as saying that “At this point the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitely into a `party of death’ because of its choices on bioethical questions as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book, `The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.’”

It’s a valid news story, for sure, but it violates the most basic rule for fairness in journalism: Get the other side of the story. The CNS story has no comment whatsoever from the Democratic Party (or, in standard journalistic procedure, a sentence saying that it declined comment) or anyone else who might disagree with the archbishop. Nor did The Tablet insert such a comment in its lead story.

Did your diocesan paper play this story this weekend? And how is your paper handling the campaign in general this year? It won’t make an endorsement in the campaign, of course, since this would risk loss of non-profit status. But has it in effect endorsed a candidate?

I’ve blogged quite a lot on this book, which I think offers one of the best discussions of the topic of abortion and the law that is around.  It situates the abortion issue more broadly in the context of social justice and family policy.   So I’ve (finally!)  collected a few passages for your information and reflection: I hope they’re an incentive to buy the book.

Mary Ann Glendon
Abortion and Divorce in Western Law
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1987

Selected Passages

Page 40

The Continuing Consensus
Brigitte and Peter Berger write in their recent book on family policy:  “Any new consensus on [the abortion] issue will emerge from common reflection about uncertainties, rather than from shared certitude.”152  Taking this as a starting point, it seems likely, according to the public opinion surveys, that a consensus based on uncertainty has been present all along in the United States.

152.  Brigette Berger and Peter Berger, The War over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (New York: Anchor Books, 1983), 81.

Page 53

Abortion and Dependency
If we do one day rethink our entire public policy relating to abortion, some aspects of the European experience are, I would submit, particularly important for us to take into account.  Abortion regulation as such should be viewed in the context of other laws relating to mothers and children.  If we are to move from abortion on demand to reimposition of restrictions on abortions in certain situations, we should review the entire complex of laws that bear on maternity and child-raising, including but not limited to our welfare and child support laws.  An important segment of the pro-life movement has already recognized that those who would restrict or deny abortion should be prepared to give the pregnant woman every possible form of assistance.  If the state is once again to restrict the availability of abortion and to affirm the value of unborn life, it should in all fairness strive to help those who bear and raise children, not only during pregnancy but also after childbirth.

Page 57-58

The international picture shows some curious contrasts.  First, in countries where the idea of the social welfare state is strong, primary responsibility for child support is unambiguously fixed on the parents and backed up by extremely efficient collection machinery.  In the United States, where public responsibility for needy children is assumed only grudgingly, there has been until recently little effort to impose child support in adequate amounts and to see that it is collected.  Second, European abortion law has been heavily influenced by notions of what is reasonable to require from a pregnant woman, and European child support law by notions of what it is reasonable to require from an absent father.  American abortion law and, at least until recently, child support law has expected little from either men or women.  Third, the ideology of privacy has become a leading motif in American, but not in other countries’ treatment of family matters.  When applied to the family, the right to be let alone often turns out in practice to be the right to leave others alone—as American women desiring abortions and men unwilling to pay child support have been able to do with relative ease over the past several years.  When we consider the totality of regulations bearing on the question of abortion, it appears more clearly than ever how different the United States’ position is, even from that of other countries which have elective abortion.  Our law stresses autonomy, separation, and isolation in the war of all against all, in contrast to Sweden where the laws emphasize sex equality and social solidarity, West Germany where the message is pro-life and social solidarity, and France where equality, life, and solidarity are all sought to be promoted.  The European laws not only tell pregnant women that abortion is a serious matter, they tell fathers that producing a child is serious too, and communicate to both that the welfare of each child is a matter in which the entire society is vitally interested.

Page 59

At present, as we have seen, what American law about abortion communicates is that fetal “potential life” is outweighed by any interest at all of the pregnant woman until the last trimester.  Even then, fetal life need not be protected as a constitutional matter.  If a state does decide to regulate abortion at that point, it must still assure that an abortion can be performed if the mother desires it and if a single doctor judges it necessary to preserve her health, broadly construed to include a notion of “well-being.”234  In contrast, all of the West European laws, while permitting abortion on a wide variety of grounds, communicate that fetal life is an important interest of the society and that abortion is not a substitute for birth control.

234.  Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 192 (1973). (Doctor’s medical judgment relating to health of pregnant women “may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient.”)

Page 134-135

At this point I would like to draw out another, quite different but still specifically legal strand that has to be part of any explanation of why the continental countries and the United States diverge in their approaches to the subjects with which we have been concerned here.  The presence of specific family protection language in many European constitutions is of a piece with the existence in continental countries of explicit national family policy.  In the United States, we have no counterpart to European cabinet ministers charged with responsibility for family affairs.  Nor do we have mandatory national programs of maternity benefits and child care, or meaningful subsidies for families with children.  We also lack those networks of local and national private or semiprivate organizations called family associations that exert quite a powerful influence on family policy in many countries.  This does not mean that American society is anti-family, or that continental countries are particularly pro-family or pro-child.  It does not even mean that we do not have a family policy.  What it does mean is that our family policy is implicit, contained in the details of tax law, employment law, pension and insurance law, social welfare and social security law, and so on.  Because it is implicit, it is largely unexamined, and its implications for family life are insufficiently aired and discussed.

Some Catholics present the Catholic social teaching as if it were a nice option–but quite secondary to promoting family values. That’s a distorted reading of the tradition, in which the dependence of the vulnerable, including vulnerable families, upon social networks, including governmental support, is consistently acknowledged.

This article raises the question sharply, especially in light of the current economic crisis: what will happen when parents can’t afford to feed their children?

What happened in the Depression?

In her debate tonight, Governor Sarah Palin endorsed “American exceptionalism:–she invoked the Puritan ideal of a “city on a hill”–a New Jersualem.

This is a topic on which we at dotccommonweal are prepared to debate–in fact, we have debated in the past.

Any new thoughts about the use/advisability/ helpfulness of the image?

Who’s afraid of Sarah Palin? And her faith? I’m one of those who thinks all the hand-wringing about her supposedly ideological right-wing faith is way overblown. Could she be a right-wing religious ideologue if in office? Perhaps she’d follow the script if that’s what she was told to do. But what really emerges from a review of her statements about faith and policy is that there really isn’t much connection, and efforts to connect her Pentecostal upbringing (which she has admittedly been running away from, and fast) to speaking in tongues or “Third Wave” theology winds up not only as cheap shots, but as pretty thin: I’m not sure she understand all that stuff any better than I do. Or Bonhoeffer (or Barth) for that matter. But she might want to check them out. As it stands now, her version of “religionless” faith comes off as an all too typical American believer who doesn’t reckon with tradition or faith in public life; yes, Biden and Pelosi aren’t exactly Aquinas and Augustine. But I’m not sure how Palin’s “values” connect with public policy, if it all.

Palin has in previous campaigns said she’s for teaching creationism, but won’t push it, said she’s for abstinence-only sex ed, then said she’s “pro-contraception” sex ed, and said she’s “pro-life” but won’t push policies against abortion. In another segment (NYT transcript here and Christianity Today here) from her Couric interviews, Palin again does this dance.

Ms. Couric: If a 15-year-old is raped by her father, do you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion, and why?

Ms. Palin: I am pro-life. And I’m unapologetic in my position that I am pro-life. And I understand there are good people on both sides of the abortion debate. In fact, good people in my own family have differing views on abortion, and when it should be allowed. Do I respect people’s opinions on this? Now, I would counsel to choose life. I would also like to see a culture of life in this country. But I would also like to take it one step further. Not just saying I am pro-life and I want fewer and fewer abortions in this country, but I want them, those women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal, for them to be supported, and adoptions made easier.

Ms. Couric: But ideally, you think it should be illegal for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion?

Ms. Palin: I’m saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in. And, um, if you’re asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an … abortion, absolutely not. That’s nothing I would ever support.

Ms. Couric: Some people have credited the morning-after pill for decreasing the number of abortions. How do you feel about the morning-after pill?

Ms. Palin: Well, I am all for contraception. And I am all for preventative measures that are legal and safe, and should be taken, but Katie, again, I am one to believe that life starts at the moment of conception. And I would like to see …

Ms. Couric: And so you don’t believe in the morning-after pill?

Ms. Palin: … I would like to see fewer and fewer abortions in this world. And again, I haven’t spoken with anyone who disagrees with my position on that.

Ms. Couric: I’m sorry, I just want to ask you again. Do you not support or do you condone or condemn the morning-after pill?

Ms. Palin: Personally, and this isn’t McCain-Palin policy …

Ms. Couric: No, that’s OK, I’m just asking you.

Ms. Palin: But personally, I would not choose to participate in that kind of contraception.

 Palin also endorsed the “right to privacy” that is the underpinning of Roe v. Wade, and I don’t think this was a trick question, as Couric explained it to her very gently and carefully. That should give abortion opponents fits, no?

Or this on evolution and teaching creationism:

Couric: Do you believe evolution should be taught as an accepted scientific principle or as one of several theories?

Palin: Oh, I think it should be taught as an accepted principle. And, as you know, I say that also as the daughter of a school teacher, a science teacher, who has really instilled in me a respect for science. It should be taught in our schools. And I won’t deny that I see the hand of God in this beautiful creation that is Earth. But that is not part of the state policy or a local curriculum in a school district. Science should be taught it science class.

Palin’s most Falwell-esque remark may be her view that homosexuality is a choice. Mark Silk has more on Palin’s interview with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt and her view that she doesn’t belong to any church, but that people are mocking her faith.

In any case, does this sound like a Warrior Queen of the Religious Right? Perhaps tonight’s debate will clarify.

UPDATE: Sarah Pulliam at Christianity Today has transcripts of both Palin and Biden’s comments to Couric re Roe v. Wade, and Palin on her support to the right to privacy foundation of the case. (Much was made of her lack of knowledge of any other Sureme Court cases, which didn’t help her much. But I think her stance on the case she does know, Roe, is the most interesting.)

Bill Donohue, whom I expected to shred the movie, gives it only one “thumbs (pitchfork?) down” –not two. I was surprised.

But, then, Maher actually may be more nuanced than his nasty bluster first suggests. It appears from the interviews that it’s not faith, but certainty that bothers him –whether about the existence or non-existence of God. Not entirely without sympathy, he also sees religion as the opiate of the (suffering) masses.

Anybody planning on seeing the movie? What’s the best strategy to respond? Hard core apologetics? Or something else?

In today’s NY Times, Stephen Holden reviews Bill Maher’s anti-religion movie Religulous (How long do you suppose it took for them to come up with that title?) After describing two of the favorite biblical images Maher holds up to ridicule: a talking snake, and a man who lived inside a fish, Holden has this paragraph:

The majority of Americans, however, embrace some form of blind faith. But because that faith by its very nature requires a leap into irrationality, it is almost impossible to explain or to defend in rational terms.

I take this to be Holden’s own opinion, and I wonder if it has any more basis than Maher’s ridicule. Earlier Holden cited Maher as cliaming that he was speaking for “a skeptical minority” that “constitutes 16 percent of the American population.” Presumably, then, it’s the 84 percent who are meant in Holden’s comment, embracing “some form of blind faith” that “by its very nature requires a leap into irrationality.” I wonder if Holden has ever done a serious study of religion, whether it was part of his education, so that he is writing out of simple ignorance. Or is it that he is so convinced that religious faith cannot be rational that leads him to think it blind? Or is it both?

Colbert on the economic crisis: