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Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone, regarding the meaninglessness of the Iowa caucuses and the rest of the primary season:

This caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.

If that sounds like a glib take on a free election system that allows the public to choose whichever candidate it likes best without any censorship or overt state interference, so be it. But the ugly reality, as Dylan Ratigan continually points out, is that the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.

When I complained about idiotic coverage of the primary season, this sort of article is the sort of thing I was looking for.

The Steve Kroft exposé showed that everyone from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to current House Speaker John Boehner to Congressman Spencer Bachus made investments that stood to benefit by legislation being considered at the time the investments were made…

Ordinary insider trading occurs when an owner of stock has knowledge about the corporation that is not publicly known, and uses this information to more efficiently buy or sell stock in that corporation; for example, if a shareholder in a corporation knew of a scandal before it broke, he could avoid a loss by selling the stock before it plunges in value. This is illegal; this is why Martha Stewart went to jail. The sort of “insider trading” practiced by congresspeople is not technically the same; they trade on non-public information from political proceedings that could influence corporations they would buy or sell stock in, both giving them an unfair competitive edge and influencing them to make political decisions that suit their own financial interest. I have not seen the 60 Minutes piece, but the linked summary mentions potential wrongdoing by John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Spencer Bachus:

In the piece, the House speaker [John Boehner] is singled out for buying health-care stocks in 2009, days before the so-called “public option” was killed—a measure Boehner strongly-opposed…

The dirt on [Nancy] Pelosi is that she and her husband purchased 5,000 shares in Visa in 2008 while the House was contemplating financial reform legislation that would have hurt the bottom lines of credit card companies.

Interestingly, the lesser-known Republican Congressman [Spencer Bachus] and ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee has been getting attacked the most since the report came out last night. He stands accused of benefiting from the global market meltdown in 2008, or as Schweizer says, making at least 40 option trades “between July 2008 and November 2008 — a period when markets were at their most volatile — netting as much as $50,000 by betting that the market would go up or down at crucial points in the crisis.”

In the end, it’s not difficult for each politician to give a plausible explanation for what they were doing making investments while major legislation was in the works, as Megan McArdle at The Atlantic explains:

Each of these trades does have an innocent explanation. In late September 2008, it was getting fairly obvious that there was big trouble afoot in the markets. Similarly, it was clear that the public option was dead long before its obituary ran. And Nancy Pelosi is a very wealthy lady; those types of accounts do get preferential access to IPOs.

However, the fact that we just have to take their word on this is troubling—a point McArdle makes well. “The problem is, they also have a non-innocent explanation,” she writes. “And there’s the rub: we don’t know. We ought to be able to trust our congressmen. But when they won’t take even small steps to improve their transparency … then the mistrust gets even worse.”

National unemployment has lingered above 8 percent for longer than 28 straight months. Congress, meanwhile, is a club that consists of 245 millionaires. Based on 2009 data, there are currently 66 in the Senate and 179 in the House (among current voting members). So while just 1 percent of Americans are millionaires, 66 percent of senators are millionaires, as are 41 percent of House members.

Even the 2010 elections, with its promises to “take our country back,” produced a freshman class of senators with a median net worth of close to $4 million. The median net worth of freshman House members is more than half a million dollars, according the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based, non-partisan research group that tracks the effect of money on elections and public policy…

“Most Americans are being represented by people who, any way you cut it, are in the elite of the financial elite,” Levinthal said.

Henry Blodget at Business Insider provides a concise explanation of the math behind Occupy Wall Street. The best points made here:

• Unemployment is high, 9%, officially, and much higher counting people who are under-employed. (Minorities are disproportionately unemployed.)
• Corporate profits are at an all time high. This is facilitated by oodles of tax loopholes, allowing profitable companies to not pay taxes. So, 47% of the population pays no Federal Income Tax (they do pay FICA, though, so the total tax rate isn’t much lower). Also, 2/3 of corporations pay no federal corporate tax, like General Electric and Exxon, and Bank of America. These profitable companies, Chevron, Boeing, and Citigroup paid no federal corporate tax, and Goldman Sachs and Carnival Cruise Lines paid a tiny fraction of their profit in tax (source). You know, for example.
• Income inequality, by itself, does not bother me. It’s dangerous, though, when 1% of the population owns 42% of the wealth: this allows the very wealthy to collect rents, instead of producing goods and services.
• Banks got bailed out. Corporations got stimulus money. (Mortgage holders did not get bailed out.)

With supermarket chains from Whole Foods to Safeway trumpeting their healthy produce from farmers just down the road, buying local and eating non-genetically modified organic food is surely the best thing for you and the planet. And that’s something government should get behind, right?

Actually, no — these First-World food fetishes are positively terrible for the world’s poorest people. If you want to do the right thing, give up on locavorism and organics über alles and become a globally conscious grocery buyer. This should be the age of the “cosmovore” — cosmopolitan consumers of the world’s food.

Charles Kenny dismantles opposition to genetically modified food and support for organic and local food. I agree with each of his conclusions.

[ABC News’ Jake] TAPPER: These comments from Governor Perry prompted you to Tweet, quote: “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” Were you just being cheeky or do you think there’s a serious problem with what Governor Perry said?

HUNTSMAN: I think there’s a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party - the anti-science party, we have a huge problem.

Warren Buffett on how he doesn’t want the government to be so lax in taxing rich people like him. I disagree with some of his points, ie, raising taxes does somewhat diminish the worth of investment, but who am I to quibble with Warren Buffett? He’s spot on regarding tax policy: payroll tax and social security are regressive taxes. Richer people should not pay at lower marginal tax rates.

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

PS Freakonomics Radio has a great chat with Warren’s son Peter Buffett on what it’s like to be Warren Buffett’s kid. Warren was careful to keep from making his family feel too entitled; Peter said,

[W]e didn’t know what he did. In fact when my sister filled out a form, I think in fourth or fifth grade, about what our parents did, she put ‘security analysis,’ and that was assumed that what he did was check alarm systems.

PPS: Warren Buffett is good without God.

Reporting on American Christianity is often difficult, because American Christianity is diverse in a subtle way that is not easily understood by outsiders. Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics, for example, while having some important overlap in political agenda, have historically distinct roots and important differences in tone, outlook, and approach.

The author of this article carefully describes different strands of Dominionism, which, itself, is not a mainstream Christian view. However, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry both have ties to it and will receive much support from Dominionists and their sympathizers.

Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional.

Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult.

Jose Antonio Vargas, co-winner of a Pulitzer Prize, tells his story. He was born in the Philippines, but emigrated to the United States when he was 12. It was years before he even knew that he was an undocumented immigrant. Here, Vargas describes the steps he took to become successful in America, while hiding his immigration status. And then,

Early this year, just two weeks before my 30th birthday, I won a small reprieve: I obtained a driver’s license in the state of Washington. The license is valid until 2016. This offered me five more years of acceptable identification — but also five more years of fear, of lying to people I respect and institutions that trusted me, of running away from who I am.

I’m done running. I’m exhausted. I don’t want that life anymore.

So I’ve decided to come forward, own up to what I’ve done, and tell my story to the best of my recollection. I’ve reached out to former bosses­ and employers and apologized for misleading them — a mix of humiliation and liberation coming with each disclosure. All the people mentioned in this article gave me permission to use their names. I’ve also talked to family and friends about my situation and am working with legal counsel to review my options. I don’t know what the consequences will be of telling my story.

If the DREAM Act had been passed before he started college, he probably would have become a citizen by now. If he were to pursue a legal path to immigration, he would have to spend many years back in the Philippines, abandoning his work. His case is certainly exceptional, most immigrants are not Pulitzer winners, but his story is an example of the human cost of American immigration policy.