Letters to the Editor
Geogre
Published Letters: 78 Editor's Choice: 6
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Crisis pricing vs. speculation pricing (why the tax break is silly)
[Read the article: Obama is wrong about the gas tax]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have lived through a "tax holiday" from my own state, Georgia, too, and I too saw prices drop. However, without paying attention to the context, extrapolation is utterly meaningless. Why was there a tax holiday in Illinois? Why did Georgia do the same? What were the goals?
In both cases, there was a temporary panic price or crisis price. In the case of Georgia, there was pipeline damage after Katrina, and so, to ameliorate the panic pricing of $3.00 a gallon for gasoline (which had been purchased and gone into reserves at $1.00 a gallon), there was a tax holiday. The idea was to "get past the rough patch," when the pipeline would be repaired. In other words, the expectation was that the price pressure would no longer be present at the end of the holiday.
Is there any reason to believe that oil speculators will no longer be betting on supplies by the end of this summer? Is there a reason to believe that Middle East supplies will be more stable, then? Is there a reason to believe that new suppliers will be online by then? Is there a reason to believe that there will be less domestic demand by then? In short, is there any reason to believe that current prices are "panic" or "emergent" prices? If so, then we might expect prices after the "holiday" to be lower than before -- just as occurred in Illinois and Georgia. If not, there is no reason to believe that anything like that would occur.
Furthermore, if you wish to perform a genuine analysis, you will look for Illinois vs. surrounding states before and after. You will look at Georgia vs. middle West states before and after. Did Chicago pay more than its neighbors before the "holiday?" Yes. Did they pay more after? Yes.
Without the context of pricing and supply, the argument based on the dollar per gallon is, to be polite, meaningless, and, to be rude, a smoke bomb.
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Life vs. Lives
[Read the article: The right's selective political manipulation of Catholicism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The schizophrenia in the misuse of Catholic doctrine is reflected in the general inability of Republicans and their allies to distinguish a life from lives.
If there can be an image of a cute baby, a distraught pregnant woman, or even, on the positive side, a hunger distended child with a begging bowl, then that is "a life" that such persons empathize with and want to save. However, as soon as the person stands in a group, that group becomes unreal to these thinkers. The group is "people," and people do not matter. A starving child will get them to contribute to Trapper John MD or Sally Struthers, but the starving masses in Africa are a nuisance on the nightly news. A gunned down nun is horrific, but five hundred pilgrims blown up by a bomb is just people.
The problem here is both the immediate dehumanizing of the person into a collective noun, where suddenly doctrine and Christianity are held in abeyance, and the silent moral judgment of "innocence." A group is never innocent. A nation is never innocent (because the nation becomes "Saddam Hussein" or "Kaddafi" or "Idi Amin," and the moral stain of the leader metonymically reverses onto all of the citizenry), and so they can forget Christ's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" might mean all the neighbors and not just the "innocent" ones.
It is why the same people can be rabid and venomous about the abortion argument, one way, and capital punishment, the other. The innocent life is to be saved, and the guilty is to be extinguished.
To say that they are hypocrites is almost beside the point. Of course they are. However, they have made themselves hypocrites by convenient tricks of language and incoherent habits of mind, and the best fight against them is showing them individual after individual, as you have done, and asking them to account for each innocent life.
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Can I change my, err....
[Read the article: Obama Veepstakes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Salon readers have good ideas. Webb and Clarke would either one be a strong help to Obama. Clarke, in particular, would be a stellar pick. He is articulate, experienced, photogenic, and quick on his feet. He could hold his own in knowledge, if not speed, with any nominee McCain brings. (My "pick" had been the governor of Kansas.) Webb is a bit too DINO to be quite compelling. He would always look uncomfortable standing next to Obama.
Salon readers seem to have it right... almost.
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<b>Shame</b> on the Inquirer
[Read the article: Rick Santorum's twisted logic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rick "Corpse Cuddler" Santorum a columnist? Rick "Manbearpig" Santorum an author?
It's no surprise, Alex, that Santorum writes incoherent spite, no surprise that he cannot interpret his own religion meaningfully, much less understand world religions at all. This is the man who took an infant corpse home to have his children kiss. This is the man who saw a slippery slope between gay civil unions and bestiality (which of the homosexuals he considered the beast is unclear).
What's a surprise is that the Inquirer gave him space. He lost his seat, long ago lost his relevance, and now has gotten a megaphone? Shame on them.
As for the two kingdoms, St. Augustine's Civitas Dei has always had a sporadic vogue. To the degree that state powers can co-opt Christianity, they will, and, when they do, they will produce crops of religious and secular leaders who speak of the divine mission to have a purely Christian nation. When the state powers cannot or do not wish to co-opt Christian values, the leaders of both church and state will rediscover the fact that the religion was founded on a rejection of secular power, a rejection of violence, and a rejection of seeking power. Jesus told the Zealot that he didn't understand what power really is. He told His disciples that the kicking out of the Romans was not a job for man. He told them that a Roman occupier had shown more faith than any of them. Santorum will keep his aspirations in the forefront of his mind, I fear, and the Inquirer should find a nice bishop to write a column.