Lee Davidson is talking about today’s Mormons, not Mormons in Brigham Young’s day.  Davidson even asks the question of whether anyone should be afraid of Mormon beliefs.  He quotes current Salt Lake City Mayor (a non-practicing Escopalian):

“I don’t think the rest of the world needs to be worried,” Becker said. “I don’t see in my experience that people of the Mormon faith are different from people of other faiths in their approach to making decisions about politics,” Becker said. “… all of us are affected by our values and principles in terms of how we look at the world.”

I agree that current Mormon attitudes are not to be feared, but I was curious to see what scriptural support Davidson had in his article.

• D&C 101:80 – [God] “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose”
• D&C 134:1- “We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man.”
• D&C 134:9 – “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government”

It seems to me that Davidson is not quoting verse 9 in the same context as it was intended.  The exact quote from Davidson is this:

No arm twisting >> Doctrine and Covenants 134 says “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government.”  So the church says it does not dictate policy to its members who are politicians.

Its mormon.org website says, “The church may communicate its views to them just as it would to any other elected official, but it recognizes these men and women must make their own choices based on their best judgment and with consideration of the constituencies they were elected to represent.”

While I agree with the sentiments Davidson is expressing, I think the whole verse should be quoted.  Here’s the entire verse:

We do not believe it just to ^amingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.

In a Pew Research Forum interview in 2007, Richard Bushman gives a bit better context for this scripture.  In the 1830′s an 1840′s, it was legal to discriminate against Mormons, Jews, and Muslims in some states.  Even though Joseph was advocating for a theocracy, Bushman says,

One of the first ordinances passed by the Nauvoo council was a toleration act specifying that all faiths were welcome in the city and listing a number of them: Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Latter-day Saints, Catholics, Jews and “Mohammedans,” as Muslims were called. There was probably not a Mohammedan within a thousand miles, but it was a gesture of openness to every religion.

Nauvoo, then, was to be a diverse city, indicating that Joseph Smith’s civic idealism went beyond his own people to envision a much more cosmopolitan society.

So, the scripture is really advocating an openness toward all religions so that none are discriminated against.  It is not advocating that religion and government should never mix.  Less than a decade later, Joseph would run for U.S. President, and he had no thought to abdicate his role as prophet.

So, do you agree with Davidson’s assertion that “Church doctrine says it is unjust to mix religion and civil government”, or is there a bit more nuance?

Brian Hales gave a very interesting presentation on Joseph Smith’s polygamy. I was late and didn’t hear the beginning of the presentation, but he discussed the issue of Joseph being sealed to other men’s wives. Most refer to this as polyandry, though Larry Foster has disputed that terminology in the past, preferring the term “proxy husband” or something similar. At any rate, Hales contends that there is no evidence that Joseph had sexual relations with any of these women. He notes that many other experts disagree with this position, and wasn’t surprised that many in the audience disagreed with that position.  He also discussed the reliability of John C. Bennett’s words about polygamy.  Bennett was Nauvoo Mayor, and Assistant President of the Church before he was excommunicated for unauthorized polygamy.  Bennett later wrote an expose of Mormonism and some believe he was one of the instigators of the mob that killed Joseph.

Hales did a great job presenting his information.  He stated that Bennett was very unreliable (as most experts agree.)  He also noted that many of the allegations that Joseph had sexual relations with these “polyandrous” wives occurred at least a decade after the marriages, so there is nothing contemporary from Joseph’s lifetime.  While Hales makes a good point, on this second issue I am not persuaded.  I asked him 2 questions.  First, I asked him about a really odd story about surrogate parenthood in the days of Brigham Young. Click here for full details. In brief, a convert couple could not conceive children due to a medical condition of the husband. Brigham Young proposed a temporary civil divorce. The wife (Mary Richardson) was civilly married to a man by the name of Frederick Cox. He fathered two children in a sort of levirate marriage (mentioned in the New Testament). Then they divorced, Mary re-married (and was sealed) to her original husband. It’s definitely an odd story.

My point is that this seems to be a sort of polyandry. Kathryn Daines mentions that it was “family legend” that the Richardsons obtained a divorce. Brian Hales indicated he felt it was solid evidence and not adultery. It sure seems like if the Richardson divorce was arranged with an understanding of re-marriage, that it was a form of sexual polyandry, with a wink and a nod to civil law. If Brigham Young sanctioned it, it seems to me that Brigham must have felt that such an unusual arrangement must have been ok with Joseph Smith.

Secondly, I asked about an unusual issue with Emma Smith. Quoting from my previous post,

Some of the footnotes are very interesting on this subject. Footnote 26 on page 305 quotes an 1844 expose of Mormonism. I don’t know if this can be corroborated, but I found it interesting.

“Emma’s threat to “be revenged and indulge herself” may have been merely a warning to the prophet to give up his spiritual wives. But Joseph H. Jackson, a non-Mormon opportunist who gained the confidence of the prophet in Nauvoo, recorded in an 1844 expose of Mormonism: “Emma wanted [William] Law for a spiritual husband,” and because Joseph “had so many spiritual wives, she thought it but fair that she would at least have one man spiritually sealed up to her and that she wanted Law, because he was such a ‘sweet little man.’”

Although there is nothing to suggest that Law and Emma were more to each other than friends, Law later confirmed that Joseph “offered to furnish his wife Emma with a substitute for him, by way of compensation for his neglect of her, on condition that she would forever stop her opposition to polygamy and permit him to enjoy his young wives in peace and keep some of them in his house and to be well treated, etc.” (Salt Lake Tribune, 3 July 1887.)

D&C 132:51 seems to refer to this incident. It says,

Verily, I say unto you: A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her;

If Emma had accepted in time, perhaps she would have been a polyandrous wife.  Of course that is just speculation, and the rest of verse 51 says it is an Abrahamic test. But it still seems like another odd incident.  Though I don’t agree with all of Hales’ conclusions, he was well prepared, and I was impressed with his presentation.

LDS members Newell Bringhurst and Craig Foster, along with RLDS members Bill Russell and Mark Sherer held a panel discussion on the Presidential candidacies of Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney.  (Mark was the moderator and did not present.)  Russell had high praise for Huntsman, saying the he was the best republican field.  Russell noted that Huntsman seems well-versed in other cultures and religions, and said that Huntsman would be able to describe other religions “in laymans, as well as Lemuel’s terms.”  Russell also indicated that if a Mormon wants to run for office and have religion be a non-issue, then they should be a democrat.  He noted that Morris Udall lost narrowly to Jimmy Carter for the democratic nominee in 1976, and noted that Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader does not have questions about his religion.  It was a great discussion.

Following lunch, I attended two controversial sessions.  Fred Collier gave a very academic presentation on the relationship between Yahweh and Satan.  He showed that Dead Sea Scroll discoveries seemed to corroborate the JST translation.  He specifically seemed to reference Deuteronomy quite a bit, with a bit of Genesis and ancient Jewish writings.  In LDS theology, Yahweh is considered the son of Elohim.

While Collier’s presentation was interesting, he fell apart during the Q&A session.  I asked him about the Documentary Hypothesis.  In brief, the hypothesis states that Elohim and Yahweh are interchangeable terms for God.  Collier hand-waved the question away, saying the hypothesis was completely debunked as far as he was concerned.  I was a bit flabbergasted with his response, as I completely disagree with this characterization.  Collier seemed completely unprepared to answer the question.

The next question was ever worse for Collier.  During the presentation, Collier said that ancient Hebrew scriptures said that Abel was the first born of Adam and Eve, and Cain was not his brother.  Rather Cain was the son of Lilith and the Serpent.  It was an interesting position–I’ve heard that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, but cast out when she refused to submit to Adam and was cast out of the Garden for saying the name of God.  Apparently she hooked up with the serpent after the expulsion and conceived Cain–that part was new to me.

At any rate, an audience member asked who the offspring of Cain were.  At first, Collier seemed to give a humorous response by saying “international bankers.”  When pressed to clarify, Collier shocked the audience by saying that “international bankers are Jews.”  The questioner was appalled, called Collier an expletive, and a few audience members stormed out of the room.  I was appalled at the anti-Semitic remarks, and was saddened that Collier holds such views.  The views overshadowed what was an otherwise interesting presentation.  It saddens me that anyone would hold such views, and I call on Fred Collier to apologize for the offensive remarks.  A few other people asked more about the curse of Cain doctrine.  Thankfully, we were out of time; I’m afraid of what other racist remarks may have come out of his mouth.

The last presentation was controversial as well.  Janice Allred, Joanna Brooks, and Margaret Toscano gave excellent presentations discussing the recent BYU Studies article titled, A Mother There: A Survey of Historical Teachings About Mother in Heaven. Janice and Margaret were both excommunicated in the 1990s for discussing Mother in Heaven in Sunstone.  Both had praise for the BYU Studies article, though they had some criticisms as well.  Margaret noted that the article referenced over 600 references in the past 167 years in General Conference or official church publications.   The BYU authors seemed to indicate that it is acceptable to discuss Mother in Heaven, and indicated an “abundance” of information on the subject.

However, Toscano noted that in the most recent 2 day General conference, there were 900 references to Father in Heaven.  She said that the BYU authors should be discussing the dearth of information on Mother in Heaven, rather than framing it as “abundant” information.  She also noted that official church pronouncements refer to the equality of husband and wife, but do not refer to “God the Mother” and “God the Father.”  I thought these were a valid points.

Joanna Brooks gave a very interesting presentation discussing some anecdotal references in her ward.  For example, On Mothers Day, the primary chorister in San Diego ward she attends non-chalantly showed a painting of a Mother in Heaven in the clouds teaching children.  During Sacrament meeting talks, there were surprising references to Mother in Heaven as well.  She tweeted about these incidents and received a variety of responses, indicating that some other wards seemed to reference Mother in Heaven as well.

The session was marred by Holly Welker, the moderator.  Holly has no manners, and seems to enjoy mocking religion.  She gave some thoughts that indicated that she does not believe in God, yet announced at the beginning of the session that they would hold a prayer circle to pray to Mother in Heaven at the end of the session.  She allowed people to leave if they were uncomfortable with the process.  Many people left because they were uncomfortable.

It seems to me that Holly enjoys shocking people, and she has poor manners even with other panelists.  For example, an audience member asked why Mother in Heaven was not present in the First Vision.  Janice Allred started to explain her belief about this incident, but Holly cut her off, saying that Holly didn’t believe in the First Vision (ignoring that Janice did), and cut off Janice’s answer because Holly was “uncomfortable.”  Yet Holly didn’t mind mocking believers with her prayer circle.  She marred an otherwise great session, and I have no respect for her.

Due to some controversial presentations in the 1990s, Sunstone has a cold relationship with the church, and the church still refuses to allow some employees to participate.  There has been a thaw in relations, though it’s still cold.  I would really like Sunstone to gain favor in the church.  However, with people like Holly Welker and Fred Collier, I can understand why the church has a cold war with Sunstone.  It makes me sad that these people can spoil such a wonderful opportunity to discuss theology and Mormonism.  Comments?

“I know in April, I can’t raise my hand to sustain Church leaders after their position…” wrote one well-known tea party activist.

“They (the LDS Church) should lose their tax exempt status,” wrote a conservative Young Republican delegate heretofore loyal to the Mormon Church.

In another SL Tribune article, Peggy Fletcher Stack wrote,

Burton’s presence was an extraordinarily public endorsement for the LDS Church, which typically prefers to work in the background. And it has supporters and critics from within the faith scrambling to know how to react.

One thing is clear: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has abandoned its claims to neutrality on these bills.

And that surprised many who have been told repeatedly by the church’s spokesmen that it had no position and that its lobbyists, Bill Evans and John Taylor, were on Capitol Hill solely to answer questions.

Though Evans and Taylor assured Ron Mortensen, an ardent opponent of illegal immigration, that the church wasn’t actively lobbying on the issue, the two “spent literally the last 10 days in the back alleys of the Capitol, like full-time fixtures,” Mortensen said. “It wouldn’t have taken that much time to say the church is neutral.”

Both supporters and opponents agree that the church’s endorsement of the Utah Compact and its involvement in the legislative process was a game-changer.

If the Utah Legislature had been in session right after Arizona passed its stringent immigration law, the Beehive State “likely would have gotten the same thing,” said Paul Mero, president of the conservative Sutherland Institute.

But with LDS Church support for immigration reform, Mero said, “We’ve had a 180[-degree] turn in this state. Culturally, more and more folks understand how reasonable comprehensive reform is compared to enforcement only.”

So, what’s your take on the immigration issue, and Utah’s repudiation of the Sandstrom Bill (patterned after the controversial Arizona law)?  Did the threat of limiting missionary visa’s have any effect on this legislation?

I’ve decided to do a little survey.  Here are some dictionary definitions for prejudice, bigotry, and racism.  Perhaps some terms are better used than others terms for certain topics.  What do you think?

Henry Ford: Madman, Socialist, or Smart Capitalist?

On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced that he was paying workers on his famously productive Model T assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan, $5 per eight-hour day.  That was almost three times what the typical factory employee earned at the time.  In light of this audacious move, some lauded Ford as a friend of the American worker; others called him a madman or a socialist, or both.  The Wall Street Journal termed his action “an economic crime.”  Ford thought it a cunning business move, and history proved him right.The higher wage turned Ford’s autoworkers into customers who eventually could afford to plunk down $575 for a Model T.  Their purchases in effect returned some of those $5 paychecks to Ford, and helped finance even higher productivity in the future.  Ford was neither a madman nor a socialist, but a smart capitalist whose profits more than doubled from $25 million in 1914 to $57 million two years later.

Ford understood the basic economic bargain that lay at the heart of a modern, highly productive society.  Workers are also consumers.  Their earnings are continuously recycled to buy the goods and services other workers produce.  But if earnings are inadequate and this basic bargain is broken, an economy produces more goods and services than its people are capable of purchasing.  This can lead to the vicious cycle Marriner Eccles witnessed after the Great Crash of 1929 and that the United State began to experience in 2008.  (Global trade complicates this bargain but doesn’t negate it, as I will discuss later.)

Ok, the quote above is from Chapter 3 (page 28) of Robert Riech’s new book Aftershock.  Let me ask you.  Was Ford a socialist, madman, or smart capitalist?  The title of this chapter is “The Basic Bargain.”  What do you think of Reich’s definition of what happens when the bargain is broken?  Was Henry’s lavish spending on workers a contributing factor to the Depression?

Across the nation, the most affluent Americans have been seceeding from the rest of the nation into their own separate geographical communities with tax bases (or fees) that can overwrite much higher levels of services.  They have moved into office parks and gated communities, and relied increasingly on private security guards instead of public police, private spas and clubs rather than public parks and pools, and private schools (or elite public ones in their own upscale communities) for their children rather than the public schools most other children attend.  Being rich now means having enough money that you don’t have to encounter anyone who isn’t.  The middle class and the poor, meanwhile, rely on public services whose funding is ever more precarious:  schools whose classrooms are more crowded; public parks and libraries open fewer hours and often less attended to; and buses and subways that are more congested.  The adjective “public” in public services has often come to mean “inadequate.”

There is another parallel.  In the years leading up to 2007, with the real wages of the middle class flat or dropping, the only way they could keep on buying–raising their living standards in proportion to the nation’s growing output–was by going deep into debt.  “As in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing,” as Eccles put it.  Savings had averaged 9-10 percent of after-tax income from the 1950s to the early 1980s, but by the mid-2000s were down to just 3 percent.  The drop in savings had its mirror image in household debt (including mortgages), which rose from 55 percent of household income in the 1960s to an unsustainable 138 percent by 2007.  Ominously, much of this debt was backed by the rising market value of peoples homes.

The years leading up to the Great Depression saw a similar pattern.  Between 1913 and 1928, the ratio of private credit to the total national economy nearly doubled.  Total mortgage debt was almost three times higher in 1929 than in 1920.  Eventually, in 1929, as in 2008, there were “no more poker chips to be loaned on credit,” in Eccles words.  And “when … credit ran out, the game stopped.”

A third parallel: In both periods, richer Americans used their soaring incomes and access to credit to speculate in a limited range of assets.  With so many dollars pursuing the same assets, values exploded.  the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached eight thousand on July 16, 1997, and eleven thousand on May 3, 1999.  More money poured into dot-coms than could be efficiently used, then into more miles of fiber-optic cable than could ever be profitable.  The Dow dropped when these bubbles burst, but recovered on self-fulfilling expectations of even higher share prices to come–rising to twelve thousand on October 19, 2006, then to thirteen thousand on April 25, 2007.  With easy access to credit, the middle class joined in the party, boosting housing prices to all-time highs.   Yet it is an iron law of economics, as well as of physics, that expanding bubbles eventually burst.

…

Wall Street cheered them on in the 1920s, making a ton of money off gullible investors, almost exactly as it would in the 2000s.  In 1928, Godman Sachs and Company created the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, which promptly went on a speculative binge, luring innocent investors along the way.  Four years later, after the giant bubble burst, Mr Sachs appeared before the Senate.

[dialogue between Senator Couzens and Mr. Sachs shows that the stock price of the trading company plummeted from 104 to 1 3/4]

…

Yet however much Wall Street’s daredevil antics in the 1920s and in the 2000s were proximate causes of the giant bubbles of these two eras, the bubbles also reflected deeper problems Eccles identified–the growing imbalance between what most peopel earned as workers and what they spent as consumers, and the increasingly lopsided share of total income going to the top.  In both eras, had the share going to the middle class not fallen, middle-class consumers owuld not have need to go as deeply into debt in order to sustain their middle-class lifestyle.  Had the rich received a smaller share, they would not have bid up the prices of speculative assets so high.

Ok, can anyone see any problem with Reich’s reasoning at this point?

Eccles, FDR, and James Roosevelt (FDR's son)

The Great Depression lasted from the stock market crash in 1929 until World War 2.  In the middle of this economic crisis, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Utahn Marriner Eccles to become the Fed Chair.  Robert Reich has high praise for Eccles in his latest book Aftershock, even going so far as to rate both Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan as “no Marriner Eccles.”  Frankly, I was astonished at Reich’s praise for Eccles throughout the book.  From chapter 1 to the end of the book, Reich repeatedly referred to Eccles.  On page 11, Reich gives a bit of background on Eccles,

While Eccles is largely forgotten today, he offered critical insight into the great pendulum of American capitalism.  His analysis of the underlying economic stresses of the Great Depression is extraordinary, even eerily, relevant to the Crash of 2008.  It also offers, if not a blueprint for the future, at least a suggestion of what to expect in the coming years.

A small, slender man with dark eyes and a pale, sharp face, Eccles was born in Logan, Utah, in 1890.  His father, David Eccles, a poor Mormon immigrant from Glasgow, Scotland, had come to Utah, married two women, became a businessman, and made a fortune.  Young Marriner, one of David’s twenty-one children, trudged off to Scotland at the start of 1910 as a Mormon missionary but returned home two years later to become a bank  president.  By age twenty-four he was a millionaire; by forty he was a tycoon–director of railroad, hotel, and insurance companies; head of a bank holding company controlling twenty-six banks; and president of lumber, milk, sugar, and construction companies spanning the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas.

In the Crash of 1929, his businesses were sufficiently diverse and his banks adequately capitalized that he stayed afloat financially.  But he was deeply shaken when his assumptions that the economy would quickly return to normal was, as we know, proved incorrect.  ’Men I respected assured me that the economic crisis was only temporary,’ he wrote, ‘and that soon all the things that had pulled the country out of previous depressions would operate to that same end once again.  But weeks turned to months.  The months turned to a year or more.  Instead of easing, the economic crisis worsened.’  He himself had come to realize by late 1930 that something was profoundly wrong,”

…

When Eccles’s anxious bank depositors began demanding their money, he called in loans and reduced credit in order to shore up the banks’ reserves.  But the reduced lending caused further economic harm.  Small businesses couldn’t get the loans they needed to stay alive.  In spite of his actions, Eccles had nagging concerns that by tightening credit instead of easing it, he and other bankers were saving their banks at the expense of community–in “seeking individual salvation, we were contributing to collective ruin.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar to our current day?  Reich notes that the reaction of the day by leading economists and business leaders (from page 13) was that,

government’s only responsibility was to balance the federal budget.  Lower prices and interest rates, they said, would inevitably “lure ‘natural new investment’ by men who still had money and credit and whose revived activity would produce an upswing in the economy.”  Entrepreneurs would put their money into new technologies that would lead the way to prosperity.  But Eccles wondered why anyone would invest when the economy was so severely disabled. Such investments, he reasoned “take place in a climate of high prosperity, when the purchasing power of the masses increases their demands for a higher standard of living and enables them to purchase more than their bare wants.  In the America of the thirties what hope was there for developments on the technological frontier when millions of our people hadn’t enough purchasing power for even their barest needs?”

From page 14,

Eccles also saw that “men with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game, in shaping the actions of government that enforced those rules, and in conditioning the attitude that enforced those rules, and in conditioning the attitude taken by people as a whole toward those rules.  After I had lost faith in my business heroes, I concluded that I and everyone else had an equal right to share in the process by which economic rules are made and changed.”  One of the country’s most powerful economic leaders concluded that the economic game was not being played on a level field.  It was tilted in favor of those with the most wealth and power.

Eccles called for a change in the economy.  Rather than catering to the whims of the richest, he said the economy needed to help all Americans.  Balancing the budget was the wrong remedy, because it would help the rich at the expense of all Americans.  Three years prior to famed economist John Maynard Kenyes, Eccles proposed (from page 14)

that the government had to go deeper into debt in order  to offset the lack of spending by consumers and businesses.  Eccles went further.  He advised the senators on ways to get more money into the hands of the beleaguered middle class.  He offered a precise program designed to “bring about, by Government action, an increase in the purchasing power on the part of all people.”

From page 15,

His proposed program included relief for the unemployed, government spending on public works, government refinancing of mortgages, a federal minimum wage, federally supported old-age provisions, and higher income taxes and inheritance taxes on the wealthy in order to control capital accumulations and avoid excessive speculation.  Not until these recommendations were implemented, Eccles warned, could the economy be fully restored.

It was a tough sell.  Roosevelt had campaigned on balancing the budget.  From page 16,

Roosevelt’s budget of 1934 contained many of Eccles’s ideas, violating the president’s previous promise to balance the budget.  The president “swallowed the violation with considerable difficulty,” Eccles wrote.

The following summer, after the governor of the Federal Reserve Board unexpectedly resigned, Morgenthau recommended Eccles for the job.   Eccles had not thought about the Fed as a vehicle for advancing his ideas.  But a few weeks later, when the president summoned him to the White House to ask if he’d be interested, Eccles told Roosevelt he’d take the job if the Federal Reserve in Washington had more power over the supply of money, and the New York Fed (dominated by Wall Street bankers) less.  Eccles knew that Wall Street wanted a tight money supply and correspondingly high interest rates, but the Main Streets in America–the real economy–needed a loose money supply and low rates.  Roosevelt agreed to support new legislation that would tip the scales toward Main Street.  Eccles took over the Fed.

For the next fourteen years, with great vigor and continuing vigilance for the welfare of average people, Eccles helped steer the economy through the remainder of the Depression and through World War II.  He would also become one of the architects of the Great Prosperity that the nation and much of the rest of the world enjoyed after the war.

Eccles retired in Utah in 1950 to write his memoirs and reflect on what had caused the largest economic trauma ever to have gripped america, the Great Depression.  Its major cause, he concluded, had nothing whatever to do with excessive spending during the 1920s.  It was, rather, the vast accumulation of income in the hands of the wealthiest people in the nation, which siphoned purchasing power away from most of the rest.

Reich goes on to show 2 very important graphs outlining the problem.  In Figure 1, (page 21) he shows an interesting phenomena.  During the 2 greatest crashes in stock market history, 1929, and 2007, the richest 1% of the nation (those that make above $398,9000 in 2007), accounted for nearly 25% of the wealth of the nation.  You can see this in the graph at the left because the 2 ends are at the highest points.  The rich are becoming rich at the expense of the poor.

During the trough of this (roughly from 1938-1983), the U.S. economy was under what Reich calls “the Great Prosperity.  Looking at a second graph, we see an interesting phenomenon.  From 1947-1974, productivity and wages matched.  After 1974, wages stagnated even though productivity increased.  The gap in income for workers went to the richest 1% of Americans.  If we want to fix the economy, this gap must close.

Reich has some very interesting, counter-intuitive proposals that I will discuss in a future post.   His main idea is to quit squeezing the middle class.  He says the rich are getting rich at the expense of the middle class.  He says that the problem with America currently is not jobs, it is pay.  If we can fix this disparity, the economy will be better for both the rich, the poor, and the middle class.  What do you think about these ideas so far?

would allow local law enforcement to check people’s residency or citizenship status if officers have “reasonable suspicion” they have entered the country illegally. It would also allow for a warrantless arrest if an officer has a “reasonable suspicion” that the person they are facing is here illegally.

It seems to be modeled after the controversial Arizona law.  Some Latino activists are upset with the proposed bill.  Many opponents of Sandstrom’s bill have been unhappy about this heavy-handed approach to immigration problems, and have reminded him that the LDS church has supported the principles of the Utah Compact, a document that says,

We must adopt a humane approach to this reality, reflecting our unique culture, history and spirit of inclusion. The way we treat immigrants will say more about us as a free society and less about our immigrant neighbors. Utah should always be a place that welcomes people of goodwill.

The LDS Church has endorsed the Utah Compact, and the New York Times supports the Utah Compact.  Some Latino activists would like the church to do more.  They would like the LDS church to help influence Mormons (such as Sandstrom) to embrace less hostile forms of legislation.  The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that Raul Lopez-Vargas

A former vice president of a local community group has penned a letter to Mexican President Felipe Calderón seeking the temporary suspension of visas issued to Mormon missionaries in response to his view the LDS Church hasn’t stood tough against Utah-based immigration reform bills.

There are those that think the LDS church should not be involved in any politics, from gay marriage to immigration.  Yet sometimes they are pulled into the fray.  What do you think?  Is such a position tenable, when the LDS church must work with foreign governments for missionary work?

Feel free to answer any of these questions, because I really haven’t a clue–especially when it comes to Tunisia.

Huntsman or Romney

Apparently it is not too early to start speculating on the 2012 election.  Ambassador (and returned missionary) to China, Jon Huntsman organized a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday.  Even the Wall Street Journal is curious about Huntsman’s presidential aspirations.  Asked about Huntsman’s presidential aspirations,

“I’m sure that him having worked so well with me will be a great asset in any Republican primary,” said President Barack Obama, flashing a broad smile, as laughter broke out in the room. (Deseret News)

While Mitt definitely has more name recognition, there is speculation that Obama picked Huntsman as Chinese ambassador not only because he speaks fluent Chinese from having served as a  missionary, but also to dampen Huntsman’s chances for a presidential bid.  Mitt is known as a flip-flopper, but Huntsman has no such baggage and could be a more formidable opponent.  On January 1, Huntsman hinted at a presidential run.  Romney seems to be gearing up for a presidential run too.

Huntsman served as governor of Utah from 2005-2009.  Both men are wildly popular in Utah.  Romney won the Utah republican presidential primary in 2008 with 90% of the vote.  Huntsman had an 80% approval rating while serving as governor, despite the fact (or because of–depending on your point of view) that he loosened up Utah’s restrictive liquor laws.  A recent poll shows that Huntsman would easily beat Senator Orrin Hatch if he chose to run for Senate.  So if Huntsman runs for president, will he split the Mormon vote with Romney?  Who do you like?