Whether or Not Rhee Stays Or Goes....

This level of ambiguity about the future funding of salaries is unacceptable:

There's been wrangling over how to pay for raises and bonuses that teachers could earn if union members vote to approve the contract. Private foundations might reconsider their support if Ms. Rhee left. City budget officers worry that they might then get stuck with an unexpected bill. As we've written, both concerns are understandable; as we've also said, the obstacles seem small enough to be overcome with some ingenuity and goodwill. But there's a larger point that needs addressing.

You don't actually need much ingenuity to see the solution - a binding contract, enforceable against the entities committing money to Rhee's experiment, irrevocably locking them into their five year commitment.

To Rhee's credit, I have not heard her raise the Washington Post Editorial Board's implied threat - that if she leaves her job, the compensation package she just got through negotiating will collapse. When it occurs, that type of extortion that should lead to an executive's being asked not to let the door hit her in the posterior on her way out. But a similar issue arises with outside entities that have promised funding - they should not be permitted for the duration of their commitment to threaten to bankrupt the district or cause massive disruption of teacher compensation if they don't happen to like who the Chancellor is or what she does. If that's allowed, it's not just a question of whether Rhee stays or goes, but whether she does what they want, whatever the wishes of students, parents, teachers, other administrators or the school board. If they can yank their funding on a whim, the situation is not acceptable.

The Harness Looked Like S&M Gear?

I suspect that the proprietors speak English as a second language, but still....

Woodville North man Ian Jolly, 57, was barred from dining at Grange restaurant Thai Spice in May last year after a staff member mistook his guide dog Nudge for a "gay dog", the tribunal heard this week.

"But That Could Hurt Us In The Next Election"

One of the key features of democratically elected government is also one of the key faults - politicians face reelection. Thus, we suffer through year after year of postponement of the difficult issues to legislate, with the most likely consequences being that problems become more difficult to solve, that we reach a crisis point that forces change (given Republican opposition to even tepid financial industry regulation, one must wonder how big a crisis that must now be for Congress to act responsibly), or both.

As a consequence, even after the passage of (tepid) healthcare reform, we have people who should know better arguing that the Democrats should have abandoned that effort when it became clear that the going was tough... That the Democratic Party " have pursued that until the economy was moving in the right direction". Michael Tomasky admits that, once the Democrats embarked on that journey, "losing healthcare would have meant political death", but seems to believe that the lesson to be learned is that you should not even attempt to fight the difficult fights unless the success and popularity of your efforts are guaranteed - which would never have been the case with a healthcare reform bill.

The primary impediments to the passage of healthcare reform, up to Scott Brown's election, were internal. They were hobbled by a self-serving "independent" as well as party members intent upon lining their own pockets (future jobs, or money directed to family members), filling their campaign coffers, pandering, the contingent of moderate Republicans who were elected as Democratic "blue dogs", people paralyzed by political cowardice, a handful of people who are out of their depths as Members of Congress, a faction that felt it for some reason urgent to act in a bipartisan fashion thereby empowering the opposition party's stated goal of defeating the bill and damaging the President... categories that aren't mutually exclusive. The paralysis was self-inflicted. And yes, that level of paralysis made it appear that Congress is capable of addressing only one or two issues at a time. But that's simply not the case.

Had the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate chosen to do so, they could have agreed that they were going to be the most efficient, effective, forward-looking Congress in our nation's history. A one year covenant to set aside all of the impediments to progress I previously listed (to the extent possible, considering the Dunning-Kruger effect), where they worked hard to put together and pass legislative packages on a series of tough issues. Some would be popular, others unpopular, and some would not inspire much reaction; and then, one year later, they could revert to their unfortunate prior form to prepare for the November election. Alas, it's like that "joke" about the scorpion who stings the frog who is transporting him across a river, even though he knows he'll drown. For the Members of Congress who weren't prepared to be part of such a concerted solution, which is to say "most of them", their own personal success, fortune, and interests are what matter, even if the choices they make will drag down the party. A similar effect is presently manifesting itself in the opposition party - do and say whatever it takes to win the next election, even if it causes long-term damage to the party and its ability to govern.

The price of a huge, public display of inability to govern, sausage-making, and a reluctance to tackle hard issues? That's why Congress has perennially low approval ratings. I can't guarantee that a Congress that had the courage to act as I suggest would reap rewards at the polls, but I nonetheless suspect that if Congress demonstrated a year of efficiency and leadership, and tackled some of the tough issues that they prefer to let stagnate, they wouldn't have much to worry about in the coming election.

Simply put, I reject the notion that Congress should run away with issues because they're hard. A quote from another time, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Translation: "But I Like Neckties"

The Guardian has published a defense of the necktie, in apparent response to the question of whether the necktie is "a symbol of oppression" in the workplace. The author doesn't like the look of a collared shirt with no necktie, finds them perfectly comfortable, and sees them as "a stylish tool of self-expression." The first argument is esthetic - I personally don't have a problem with people who wear collarless shirts, open collars or turtlenecks under their suit or sport coat, no tie required. I will grant that it's a less formal look, and isn't going to be suitable in all present contexts where a necktie is expected. To each his own. Nobody would ever accuse me of being a member of the fashion police.

The final argument is true to a point. The necktie is about the only true area of self-expression allowed to men in a business setting. Sure, there are other contexts where you can be more expressive in the cut, color or fabric of your suit, but (as long as it's not too wide, or too narrow, or to short, or too long, or too bright, or too eccentric) you can add some individuality and personality to business dress with a necktie. But really, it's a limited form of self-expression, and many men don't really give that aspect of the necktie any substantial amount of thought.

But this is just plain wrong:

The most common complaint I've heard is that they're "uncomfortable". Nonsense. As a former seller of fine tailoring, I can let you in on a secret: if your tie feels uncomfortable, it's because you've got a fatter neck than you thought, and have bought your shirts a collar size too small.

No, really, for some people a necktie (or even a properly fitted dress shirt with the top button fastened) is uncomfortable, period, end of story. I'm not going to argue that people whose shirts and neckties form tourniquets around their carotid arteries won't experience more comfort if they invest better fitting shirts, but for some of us even a collar that's a half-inch "too big" doesn't give enough relief from the discomfort of having a silk noose wrapped around our necks.

But even if you're fortunate enough to feel no real discomfort when you're wearing a necktie, it's worth considering both the expressive and comfort value within the context of what you wear "the rest of the time." If you're only wearing a necktie when you have to do so, in response to certain work or social expectations, ripping the thing off of your neck at the first opportunity and not looking at another until you again "have to" wear one, it's reasonable to say that it's not a very good expression of either comfort or individuality.

If you don't believe me, just take a look at the author's headshot. When off duty, he apparently expresses his individuality through facial hair and an open collar.

What George Will's World Looks Like

George Will writes,

Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their back yards at 3 a.m.

Seriously - that's Will's personal perception of the integration of Hispanic people into American life, or how he imagines life to be for anybody who questions the Arizona legislation? What does he imagine that Justice Sotomayor was hired to do at the Supreme Court building?

The Limited Virtues of Teen Parenting

A couple of months ago, I read an argument in favor of teen parenting - not just the parenting part, but with the notion that society should unblinkingly subsidize teen mothers. The author starts out with a description of her own pregnancy, and how much she looked forward to being a mother - because, as you know, assuming that everybody else's experience is exactly the same as yours is the next-best thing to following the scientific method. She next conflates the disinterest of teen mothers she has encountered with learning how to parent with there being "something enviably instinctive about the mothering skills of those I met":

Their kids meant everything to them: at six months they were having their ears pierced, by one they had their own TV. There was no angst about, "Am I doing this right?". No textbook consulted, and on the whole, apart from what their mums advised them, no authority revered. A new pregnancy, however many children already lived in the house and whether there was a man around or not, was almost always a cause for celebration. And in the end, these mothers ended up teaching me. Like how to share your bedroom with five kids and not get wound up. Like how to rely on no one but yourself. No bloke was ever worth trusting, I was told; they were just useful for one thing, sex. These young women had an important job to do. They were bringing up the next generation. They were mums.

It gets better - why do a difficult job to make money and support yourself, maybe even getting an education, when you can simply have a baby and get a government check? As if having a family and supporting your family are incompatible concepts.

I couldn't agree more. Motherhood engendered responsibility. When we talk about teenage mothers not having aspirations, what are we talking about? Working in a chip shop? A cleaning job? Are we saying those are more noble, more "aspirational" pursuits than motherhood

As you can see, it's the people who disagree with the author who are the ones being judgmental, by thinking that it's not beneath somebody to work in fast food or housecleaning during their teen years while they lay a foundation, even get the education necessary, for a better life. It's not at all judgmental to sneer at entry level jobs as being beneath people who have not yet developed the skills or gained the education that will lead to better jobs.

But it gets even better....

When I was pregnant I decided to give a dinner for all the pregnant girls of Corby who were under 16. It was fun. We compared our bumps, ridiculed our partners, told each other anecdotes about bad sex. All had got pregnant "accidentally on purpose", and not because they had no aspirations but because they had: being a mother, living in their own flat, and being paid pocket money by the state to do so. None felt that real life was passing them by: they had each other for company. It would be a laugh. They'd have pushchair races. They'd take sandwiches and eat them in the park together. They all loved kids. Kids were the best company of all, they said. I was impressed.

Teenagers getting pregnant "accidentally on purpose", with a life plan of going on the dole, and with no deeper thoughts about parenting than "I love kids" or "It will be a laugh"? This impressed the author?

The author then describes how having three children in relatively rapid succession wore her down - how parenting was hard work. How she was competitive with other parents, particularly with her first child. How whatever control she had over her life after she had her first child was gone by the time she had her third. How resentful she became (and still appears to be) over friends who, without children, traveled, "were being artists or training for the professions", "were in restaurants with potential lovers", and didn't have any interest in her parenting stories. How her husband had to travel a lot, leaving her alone, without a similar "cool" peer group to the group of teen mothers she met on council estates (public housing). So in her twenties she was completely ill-equipped to be a parent, and yet she wants us to believe that impoverished teenagers can naturally parent in a way that she, with money and education, and resources she chooses to elide from her self-pitying summary, could not.

She closes with an example of the "natural" parenting she is talking about:

A few years later, I became, for a brief while, a truant officer. I was persuaded by every single family I interviewed that school was a waste of time. The mum would argue, 'My lad's just not happy at school. He's bullied. He finds lessons boring. He doesn't concentrate and then the teacher shouts at him. I just don't see the point of school, when you can be at home."

And I would say: "But don't you have aspirations for your child? Don't you want him to grow up and be a brain surgeon?"

And the mum would say: "What I want is for my child to be happy. And being happy with a little is better than being unhappy, isn't it?..."

And a few years after that (or maybe not) the little truant would knock up one of the "cool" teenage girls, "accidentally on purpose", who would simultaneously describe him as unreliable, untrustworthy, and useful only for sex. And those who had sons would persuade her that all that matters is being happy... with no education, no prospects, and a scattering of children being raised by mothers who want nothing more than their children to be "happy" even as their daughters come to view their sons as human detritus? Meanwhile, their fourteen year old daughters are so gratful for being raised by such a "cool" mother that they can't wait to get pregnant "accidentally on purpose" so they can get out of the home? Boy, this does sound enviable.

She never takes a step back to ask herself if the principal goal in getting pregnant "accidentally on purposes" is "living in their own flat, and being paid pocket money by the state to do so", perhaps it might be better for everybody involved to set aside her own fantasies of how "cool" these teenagers are, their fantasies of how fun and easy parenting would be, and simply directly subsidize their move to independence. Heaven forbid we present a choice that's more stark, such as, "Get pregnant, and your choices are to continue to live at home until the age of 18, or if that's not possible to live in a group home setting where you will continue your education, learn how to parent, and be supervised in your activities until you're 18." (The problem with that last idea, of course, is that in the short-term it's more expensive than saying, "Okay, here's an apartment of your own and a government check.")

I know that there are teen parents who step up to the plate, who effectively give up their childhood to do right for their own children. But sorry, a young teen who gets pregnant on purpose with the idea that she'll cast off the father and raise her child on welfare is unlikely to fall into that category - and a father who's passive about being cast aside doesn't even come close.

A much more conservative, albeit at times misguided, take on things from another author:

I visit many schools and Sure Start centres. I meet women of my age (47) who are now great-grandmothers. These women have never had jobs; have multiple children by multiple men – none of whom have ever contributed to their children's upkeep, welfare or moral guidance. They have lived on benefits because grandma did and mother did. These young girls see nothing wrong in this lifestyle and that it is their right to live like this. No one else is telling them that they shouldn't.

I visited a Sure Start centre¹ a couple of weeks ago where there were six 16-year-old girls with one-year-old babies. Three were pregnant again, none by the same boy, and they saw nothing wrong in this "lifestyle choice". They did not see anything wrong in claiming benefits and were adamant that they did not want the boys who impregnated them having anything to do with their first-born as they were now with the latest partner. It is so sad to see this and their attitudes are astounding.

I largely concur. The previous editorial's perspectives having been duly considered, there's nothing "cool" about any of that. I think, though, that it's a misperception that these teen pregnancies are principally based upon the past choices of parents and grandparents - the modeling plays a role, but I think the previous editorial made a valid point that these are in many ways economic decisions. The author also shares an implausible statistic:

I then went to a Catholic primary school that, five years ago, said around 90% of its children were living with two parents; that had now changed to 60% who were living with single parents.

Sorry, even if I thought the anecdote were relevant to the topic, I simply don't believe that such a transformation occurred over the past five years.

Now we enter the realm of hard choices:

We have to tell these girls that it is unacceptable to get pregnant outside of a stable relationship unless they can support themselves, that the taxpayer cannot afford to keep them and that they have to train to work when they leave school.

Okay, let's assume we tell them all of that, and they get pregnant anyway? I've previously described a tougher response than "give them their own apartment", but I am skeptical that the government is going to invest in supervised, structured communal housing for teen mothers. Those who stay home will see more money come into the home, and those who are kicked out have to live somewhere.

Wait, did I say "Those who stay home will see more money come into the home"? Why is that? Why not simply maintain support at the prior level, as if no new child came into the home? After all, if these families had jobs, they wouldn't get an increase in their wages merely for having another baby. Alas, there's no easy answer to this one. If you don't give additional benefits when another child enters the household of a welfare recipient, you "punish the children". And if you do, you subsidize the expansion of a family that cannot support itself, and arguably create a context where the mothers at issue benefit from either choosing to again become pregnant, or being indifferent to that outcome.

Sorry, telling these mothers, "We can't afford to keep doing this," or "You need to get a job so you can support yourself before you have children" will only work if it's true. You can say whatever you want, but nothing will change as long as the government checks keep coming. Further, in those countries where there are no government subsidies, where each new child literally does take food off of the table for everybody else in the family, it's hardly the case that impoverished people defer or opt against having children - in fact, their birth rates may be substantially higher. I wish there were easy answers to this, but there are not.

They have to be given more sex education (it is not compulsory, despite the myth, and this should start at puberty, not five years old) and offered more contraception.

That argument qualifies as silly. Sex education at age five is "good touch, bad touch" - anybody who gets upset at children being taught such concepts really should defer discussion of sex education to people who are either more informed or more comfortable with sex. Sex education preceding puberty often includes valuable information about puberty that a lot of children do not otherwise get from their parents. It may be better that a young girl learn about menarche from her mother, but I think most will agree that it shouldn't be a surprise - in retrospect, even Carrie's mom probably agrees. Also, what... we're going to assume that all kids mature at exactly the same rate? Or is it that we're going to single out kids who mature faster or slower, so that nobody learns about sex before puberty. That won't stigmatize anybody....

It is only by talking openly about marriage, sex, relationships and responsibility that we can change this. It will take a generation, but we have no choice.

By all means, let's start the dialog... but please, not with the illusion that it will transform society, let alone do so inside of a generation.

The second editorial was inspired by an essay by J.K. Rowling in which she describes how, thrust into single parenthood, she was able to make ends meet with the help of some not particularly generous government benefits, while she struggled to better herself, qualified as a teacher, and wrote 1-1/2 novels. Quite reasonably, she describes how the benefits helped her get past a difficult post-divorce period, how she resented being demonized by politicians for being a "single mother" during that time of struggle, and the silliness of the British Conservative Party's notion of a tiny tax credit that is supposed to encourage marriage.

Rowling explains how Britain's social safety net has factored in, as she's become wealthy beyond her wildest dreams:

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens,² with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

Save for becoming a billionaire author, my mother had a post-divorce period not too different from Rowling's. That's actually the historic story of most "welfare recipients" - about three years of benefits following a divorce or crisis, then they're back on their feet, having theme parks built based upon... again reaching a point where they can support themselves and their families. I'm with Rowling - that's a good thing. The hard part is to translate welfare as a short-term solution into communities where it is an acceptable lifestyle choice.

--------

1. Quoting Rowling, Sure Start centres are "service centres where families with children under 5 can receive integrated service and information." She adds, "Unless you have previously grappled with the separate agencies involved in housing, education and childcare, you might not be able to appreciate what a great innovation these centres are."

2. Subjects, actually. But there's little practical difference, I suppose.

A Big Part of How Medical Mistakes Become Malpractice Lawsuits

If recovery continues I suspect that this won't turn into a malpractice lawsuit, but the money quote comes at the end:

I notified the administration of the ER of the situation and was told that I would receive a call. No one has called in the past 8 days. An apology would have been nice.

Doctors, read up.

No Amnesty... For Others

This seems like an odd statement from a child of Cuban immigrants:

I hope Congress and the Obama Administration will use the Arizona legislation not as an excuse to try and jam through amnesty legislation, but to finally act on border states' requests for help with security and fix the things about our immigration system that can be fixed right now - securing the border, reforming the visa and entry process, and cracking down on employers who exploit illegal immigrants.

Dare I ask, then, if Marco Rubio would call for the repeal of the automatic amnesty we grant to any Cuban national who sets foot on U.S. soil?

Riding Coattails on Religion

Apparently Peter Hitchens is trying to ride the coattails of his brother's success, with his own book in support of religion. I haven't read it, but unless this is a really bad paraphrase of his ideas I don't expect that it would be worth my time:

When it comes to his brother's blast against God, he makes a number of points. On the "good without God" question, he argues that morality must make an absolute demand on you, so that even though you constantly fail to reach its high standards, you are not able to ignore it, as he believes people and politicians now do every day: witness everything from common rudeness to the suspension of Habeas Corpus. If there are no laws that even kings must obey, no-one is safe.

It's difficult to imagine that Hitchens, being British, is that ignorant of the history of monarchy. Belief in God is convenient when it explains why a particular "royal family" is on the throne - God's will - and I suppose no shortage of monarchs have believed that to be true. But who, absent perhaps a few members of the House of Windsor, presently believes that?

Meanwhile, over the course of history, how well did religion do in reigning in excess by the various kings, queens, princes, and potentates of Europe? For all of its faults, would Hitchens not concede that modern secular rule is not objectively superior in pretty much every respect?

How did we come to have the right of habeas corpus? Does Hitchens believe that an angel appeared before King John, handed him a divinely scripted Magna Carta, and that King John signed it out of his respect for God's will thereby beginning the transformation of habeas corpus from the right of the king to a right belonging to the people? (King John... another glorious example of the divine right of Kings.) What sort of alternate history does Hitchens embrace, and is it available in something other than comic book form?

Hitchens truly believes that prior to the 1960's, people were nicer and more honest because they feared eternal damnation? No surprise, before the 1950's Hitchens was a child. I recently read a commentary taking a somewhat tongue-in-cheek perspective on the various laments about how awful the world is, pointing out that in each case the speaker was reminiscing of the warm and wonderful world they enjoyed when they were pre-adolescent children. I think there's a bit more to the nostalgia than that, even if "the good old days weren't always good", but the shoe very often fits.

In any event, history is replete with kings, queens, lords, ladies, titans of industry, and others who professed to worship God yet lived lives of cruelty and debauchery. Despite the flaws of modern society and government, and the parallels between modern leaders and those of history, I can't join with Hitchens (at least as paraphrased) in nostalgia for a past that was often dismal to dreadful for ordinary people.

The Story Of Our Country

Paul Gottfried writes,

What are at issue here are two different conceptions of the welfare state, both with rival advocates. The Tea Partiers favor a massive welfare state, providing that entitlements are aimed at them. They oppose the increased use of revenues and above all, the increase of taxes to finance a different welfare state, one designed to accommodate low-income minorities, government workers, and amnestied illegal aliens.

I disagree with Gottfried, on the whole. The population in this nation that wants a social safety net that helps others is quite small. Pretty much every population, individual or corporate, fits the description Gottfried assigns to Tea Partiers, "favor[ing] a massive welfare state, providing that entitlements are aimed at them".

For those trying to ensure a social safety net to benefit others, I'm really not aware of any of note who favor what is so easily caricatured as "a massive welfare state". That may be a suitable description for some of the advocates of social welfare programs in the 1960's or 1970's, but the notion of "a hand up, not a handout" seems more resonant post Reagan's "welfare queen" stories and Clinton's welfare reform. (G.W.'s advisors recognized that fact, and thus put those very words into his mouth; unfortunately, he had little interest in doing more than mouthing them.)

These are the groups that are likely to benefit most from the present Democratic revamping of the public sector. They are also groups that will propel Democratic victories in the future; and what such legislation as national health care, and the bill to amnesty illegals, now under congressional consideration, will do is create a more solidified Democratic constituency.

Even if you accept Gottfried's thesis that the Democrats are trying to build a welfare state that will inure principally to the benefit of low-income minorities, government workers, and beneficiaries of what to-date is an imaginary amnesty bill, what he describes is in no way altruistic. He's describing G.W.'s push for immigration reform in the early months of his Presidency (when his approval ratings were quickly tanking), G.W.'s push for a massive expansion of the corporate welfare state, G.W.'s unfunded "Medicare, Part D", G.W.'s financial industry bailout proposal (initially "You give us $1 trillion or so, you get no oversight, we're not answerable to anybody in how we spend the money", but "refined" into a corporate welfare program both parties could support). You could argue that Bush thought each of those welfare programs was "for the good of the nation" but, as with Gottfried's cynical interpretation of the Obama Administration's agenda, "for the good of the party" might be a better answer.

Gottfried's idea that "a gift-bearing regime always lands up producing squabbles among the gift-recipients" is not untrue, but given the actual track record of the Republican Party the conceit that we're talking about a "democratic welfare state" is laughable. Both parties got us into this mess, and it's usually the Republicans who strive to identify and exploit wedge issues to create the various "squabbles" over who gets what.

Bush was trying to serve business interests that want immigration reform, and to gain advantage in the immigrant communities that would benefit from reform and amnesty; it's not that the Democrats have an advantage in implementing immigration reform, so much as it is that the Republican Party's catering to populist rage against immigrants "taking our jobs" has poisoned the well for that party's outreach. It's the same thing Chairman Steele conceded to the African American community. The Democratic Party doesn't have to work very hard to gain an advantage in the communities the Republican Party is content to alienate as they instead attempt to leverage Tea Party rage.

Political Knowledge

Via Kathleen Parker, I took the "2008 Survey" / Civics Quiz offered by the ISI. I could quibble with some of the questions, granting that whenever you boil the answers down to a short sentence you're going to at times force people to select the "least wrong" answer as opposed to the right one. But really, it's an easy quiz. Even for somebody who, as a student, didn't set foot in a U.S. K-12 classroom. (But I overstate my case - I am interested in politics, studied political science in college, and went to law school, none of which are necessary to success on the quiz, but all of which are no doubt correlated with doing well. I will blame my U.K/Canadian K-12 education for my missing a couple of answers on this quiz, but I'm similarly amazed by the average score of 44%. CWD, our resident military historian, would have aced this test by the time he was ten.)

I don't agree with what appears to be the political agenda of the ISI, which seems to want to inject their favored form of Christian conservatism into our education system. But I do believe that by the time a student graduates from high school they should have a basic sense of how the U.S. political system works. And I'm appalled (appalled, I tell you)... well, not really appalled, but I wanted to get your attention... that colleges are dropping an introductory level political science class on the U.S. system of government from their basic studies requirements. (Parker is more concerned about history courses, but unless colleges were requiring survey courses on American history I'm not sure that a "you must take a history class" requirement would have much of an impact.)

Same As It Ever Was

Matt Miller anticipates "class warfare" between the haves and the have-mores:

For several years I've predicted that a new wild card in American life -- the presence of economic resentment at the bottom of the top 1 percent of our income distribution -- would become a powerful force for reform. The SEC's fraud case against Goldman Sachs may be the first shot in what I think of as the revolt of the "lower upper class."

Lower Uppers are doctors, accountants, engineers and lawyers. At companies they're mostly people above the rank of vice president and below the CEO. Their comrades include well-fed members of the media (and even part-time Post columnists who earn their livings as consultants). They include government officials -- and, yes, SEC lawyers -- who didn't make or inherit fortunes before entering public service. Lower Uppers are professionals who by dint of education, hard work and good luck are living better than 99 percent of anyone who has ever walked the planet. They're also people who can't help but notice how many people with credentials much like their own seem to be living in the kind of Gatsby-like splendor they'll never enjoy.

This stings. If people no smarter or better than you are making $10 million or $50 million or $100 million in a single year, while you're working yourself ragged to scrape by on a million or two -- or, God forbid, $300,000 -- then something must be wrong.

Especially when it's clear that many of the Ultrarich are not simply reaping the rewards of the "free market" but of rigged systems that are as likely to reward failure as success.

Miller anticipates that this could rear its head in a "big skirmish" over taxes, leading to a "nightmare" scenario for the "Ultras":

First they're trying to close down our derivatives casino, the Ultras fret. Next they'll turn private equity's dubious capital gains into (more highly taxed) ordinary income. Before you know it, they'll claim the economy will hum along fine even if we raise marginal tax rates on income above $5 million a year to 50 percent! The revenge of the Lower Uppers may have only just begun. . . .

You know, just the other day I was noting that if I had a seven figure income, I could deal with a 50% tax rate. But as part of a discussion about how when you are making big money, taxes hurt a lot less than they do when you're struggling. I did concede that to a Donald Trump type, who "must" have six or seven fully staffed mansions at his disposal, along with at least one private jet for travel between them, such a tax increase may require an "unacceptable" level of sacrifice. But for the rest of us, living on $500,000+ per year, after taxes, wouldn't be much of a trauma.

But I digress.

I don't find any great insight in the idea that these "class warfare" issues may ultimately be resolved among the upper / ruling classes because that's the way they've been resolved pretty much since the dawn of time. Most of the population isn't attuned to politics. A relatively small subset of people who follow politics are sufficiently wealthy or connected to have the ear of politicians. And that's the level at which policy gets made.

Yes, if enough people in the top five percent of the population become offended by a policy, even if it's favored by the top 1%, they have the necessary access and clout to press for change. Whatever is (or is not) going on in the streets, the bulk of the transformative moments in our nation's history have been driven by the attitudes of the top 5%. Agitation on the streets may be what inspires the elite to examine an issue, but save for those exceptionally rare occasions when it appears that revolution may follow, mass movements can be placated, ignored or, if necessary, suppressed. Or, if the elites decide that it's time for change, the agitation can be useful.

Perhaps Mr. Miller saw Capitalism: A Love Story, or otherwise came across Citigroup's theory of "plutonomy". Or perhaps it simply occurred to him that if you create a system that's overtly skewed toward showering riches on plutocrats, you will eventually generate significant resentment. The difference between his perspective (the rich will turn on the ultra-rich) and Citgroup's ("labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich") is that, in my opinion, he more accurately identifies the segment of the society from which pressure for change would have to come.

As a society, as long as we can convince the guy making $10 per hour that, as long as he works hard every day, he can become rich, we don't have to worry about a mass movement. It's when the people who know better decide to stop defending that myth that the ultra-rich have a problem. Turning to Reihan Salam,

There is at least one structural change that is undeniable: namely that there's been a delinkage between corporate profits and the health of the U.S. labor market. U.S.-based multinationals now look to emerging market economies as engines of growth. At home, these firms continue to aggressively cut costs and produce more with fewer workers. This has meant robust productivity increases, a sign of good things to come. But hiring and expansion is happening where the breakneck growth is happening, and that is not in the United States.

The real danger for Citigroup and other proponents of "plutonomy" is that the top 5% of wage earners will respond not only to the concerns of the middle and upper middle class that their economic future is threatened - that, even with college educations, their children won't do as well as they have done - but that the to 5% of earners will recognize that their own futures, and their children's futures, are being plundered to feed the anti-meritocracy of the "Ultras".

The High Cost of Incarceration

Albeit from Canada, a recent editorial in The Globe and Mail by Conservative activist Tom Flanagan illustrates some of the folly that leads to an over-investment (i.e., a waste of money) in prisons. The present is compared to the past in an overtly sentimentalized fashion:

I’m not delighted about getting older, but it does have the advantage of conferring a longer memory. I can remember what it was like to be a boy in the 1950s, when crime was virtually unknown in the lives of ordinary people. My father drove all over the county in his work but never locked his car. We didn’t lock our house unless we went away overnight. I could ride my bike downtown to the Saturday-afternoon movie and leave it unlocked on the curbside. I never saw a bike lock until the 1970s.

A couple of movies ago, Michael Moore chose to depict Canada as a place where people still leave their doors unlocked, but simply put it's really not something that people do any more in any developed society. What has changed since the 1950's? Population density, mobility, income disparity.... Sad to say, yes, the world has changed - but not in ways that most people want to undo. Wistful nostalgia is great, but there's no indication that increasing the prison population will allow anybody to go back to the days of unlocked homes, cars and bicycles (to the extent that those times actually existed).

The explosion of crime has changed all that. Today, we lock up our bicycles, cars and houses. Parents are afraid to let their children walk to school or play in the park alone. I can’t even imagine what my childhood would have been like if we had been so obsessed with security.

To a significant degree we're talking odds and perceptions. There's a perception that your house is more likely to be burgled if you don't lock the door, so you lock the door. But remember that day you forgot to lock the door and didn't get burgled? The odds are nobody's going to be checking the knob - although if a would-be burglar is checking door knobs on your street (or trying car door handles), your door is unlocked, and all of your neighbors locked their doors, the odds of your house (or car) being hit go way up. And remember that day the neighbor's house was burgled, with somebody breaking a window or jimmying a lock to gain access? Some good the lock did.

When I was a kid, well after Tom's childhood days, we were still able to go to the park alone or with friends, walk to and from school, and engage in a lot of unsupervised activities even as young children. A big part of that was that our friends were doing the same thing - there were kids everywhere. Some of those kids had parents, older siblings or babysitters around, so there were older, more responsible eyes watching the activity. As we've moved our activities indoors, and have restricted kids from unsupervised activities, the odds have again changed. It's not unusual to drive by parks in my town and not see a single person there, or to see one or two families present. If a child goes there alone, the odds are that the child will spend some time with no other adult or child present. That significantly changes the risk to a child.

But again, none of this has anything to do with the incarceration rate. There's no reason to believe that if we incarcerate every known criminal for life, children will once again frolic unsupervised in the park. Given the perception of danger on every corner, we're unlikely to regain the public confidence necessary to restore the population of kids and parents in public places that renders them safe. It's not just the overblown "stranger danger" - when a child falls off a swing in an empty park, who's there to help?

The author argues that aside from the homicide rate, something he associates with ethnic minorities, the crime rate in Canada is not much different from that in the U.S. Me? I'm a murder capital kind of guy, I guess, having moved from Saskatoon (2007) to the Detroit (2001, 2008) area (no, those aren't the only years they won). In fact, my welcome to Saskatoon back in the 1970's was a murder across the hall at our hotel. But I digress. If the argument is that we should send murderers to prison, well, yeah, there are few better places for them.

The relevant comparison is between the cost of incarceration and the savings to society generated by crime prevention. The cost of crime is so high (estimated at $70-billion annually by Statistics Canada in 2003) that imprisonment of serious and repeat offenders is an excellent investment in purely economic terms – to say nothing of the value of restoring people’s faith in justice.

It is fair to consider costs and benefits when comparing the cost of incarceration to the cost of crime to society. But... it's not that simple.

First, where did that $70 billion figure come from? What does it include? I tried to find out from the Statistics Canada website, but instead found this 2007 publication:

Tracking the total financial and economic costs of victimization has yet to be undertaken in Canada.

I see....

I did find a reference to a Department of Justice statistic with the $70 billion price tag - broken down as $13 billion for criminal justice, $10 billion for "defensive measures" and $47 billion as victim cost - but a University professor should know better than to compare the cost of incarceration to a figure that includes the cost of incarceration, even if the goal is to show that prison costs are comparatively low. For that matter, why didn't he offer us a figure for prison costs to compare to that $70 billion figure?

Then there's the question, what is "victim cost"? The Statistics Canada publication mentions a 2004 attempt "to derive a monetary counter for the cost of crime, taking into account the cost of pain and suffering associated with crime in Canada" estimating a cost of $36 billion. I mean no disrespect to theoretical pain and suffering awards, but if we're inserting that type of projection into "cost of crime" statistics we're moving outside of the realm of hard numbers and into the realm of politics.

What else is missing from the analysis? First, any demonstration that increased rates of incarceration affect the cost of crime to society. Second, any support for the implicit thesis that if you assume incarceration "works" on a cost-benefit basis, you need not consider alternative punishments that are less expensive to administer. When we hand out long prison terms to people who were not deterred by the prospect of serving long prison terms, what does that say of the value of prison as a deterrent? When we claim that we're protecting society from their continued offenses, we both overlook that first time offenders rarely end up in prison or jail, many of the offenders in prison have a long history of both detected and undetected crime, and that the likelihood of recidivism is usually not a significant factor when handing out long sentences. (Murderers have a comparatively low rate of recidivism; many shoplifters repeat offend like there's no tomorrow.)

Would we be better off, for example, by investing in ways to improve crime detection and speed up prosecution, ensuring that a higher rate of criminals are caught and that they receive swift justice. Is it better to give a shoplifter probation several times before either imposing a jail sentence or escalating the charge to a felony, or might people be better deterred from habitual petty crime if they knew that a conviction would lead to at least a weekend in jail.

The phrase, "Yes, it costs a lot of money. But so what..." is usually indicative of somebody who is happy to spend other people's money to advance his own political or personal agenda, and that appears to be where Mr. Flanagan stands. Yes, crime costs society a lot of money. Yes, we do need prisons. But that's no justification for ignoring the possibility that there may be better, more efficient ways to spend the billions we pour into prisons - approaches that could better reduce crime and recidivism.

Republican Ideas for Healthcare Reform

As Newt Gingrich says, it's not enough to simply oppose healthcare reform - you have to demonstrate that the Republican Party has better ideas. Which leads us inexorably to a chicken in every... er, WTF?

Another step in our twirl toward freedom.

Update: Colbert:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Indecision 2010 Midterm Elections - Sue Lowden
www.colbertnation.com
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Trash Removal Joins the World's Most Dangerous Professions

At least in Nepal.

Soylent Spelt Tagliatelle?

Or perhaps a politically incorrect edition of "To Serve Man"? My guess is spell-check run amok and a sleepy proofreader.

The Disappearing, Reappearing D.C. Schools Budget Deficit

It's enough to make your head spin. First the D.C. Schools have a serious budget deficit and must lay off teachers. Then they don't have a deficit at all, and can use the money to fund their new teacher contract. Next thing you know, after a lot of (justified) criticism over what is at best fiscal ineptitude, the deficit has reappeared.

This raises the obvious question of whether D.C. can presently afford its new proposed teacher contract, even with the private contributions that are necessary to carry it through its first five years. Meanwhile, the litigation that this type of budget ineptitude made inevitable is under way.

Inevitably, the Washington Post is concerned with "saving" the new contract. But if the contract can't be certified as financially viable by C.F.O. Natwar M. Gandhi, it's a dead letter.

Fiscal Sustainability Without a V.A.T.

Jon Walker, commenting on left-wing factions that are pressing for a V.A.T. (Value Added Tax, a/k/a national sales tax) believes that such a tax "is not going to happen". My response to his thesis is that it would actually be quite easy to lay the foundation for a V.A.T., and once that foundation is laid it's relatively easy to expand or increase the tax.

The easy introduction of the tax is as a "national sales tax" for goods that are sold across state lines. While Internet merchants will lobby hard against such a tax, state governments very much want to tax those sales - they want the sales tax revenue and, let's be honest, most people don't voluntarily pay sales tax on their "tax free" internet purchases. A national sales tax could be reasonably low, would be payable to a single (federal) tax authority and thus easy for merchants to administer (they only have to keep track of the value of shipments they make to any given state, and forward that information to the feds along with their payment). It could even allow merchants to opt out if they already collect sales tax in every state, or for those states in which they collect sales tax.

The door is then open for expansion - having the federal government become the agent of collecting all sales taxes, with distribution to the states. Of bumping up the tax and having the feds keep a larger share. Or of bumping up the tax to "pay for" a bailout of the states.... Or to argue that we can "keep the tax low" by extending it to services as well. If you can open the door, just a crack, I think the bulk of the inertia is overcome, and we would inch toward a full-scale V.A.T./G.S.T. (Goods and Services Tax). As George Will observes,

A VAT is collected on value added at stages during the process of production, but most of its burden is borne by consumers. They file no VAT returns, so its stealthiness delights the political class, which can increase it in small, barely noticed increments, with every percentage point yielding another $100 billion.

The idea that Republicans would hate a V.A.T. is questionable - there is a faction of the political right that wants a V.A.T. For the anti-tax ideologues, or those who have signed an anti-tax pledge... well, let's see what George Will has to say:

When liberals advocate a value-added tax (VAT), conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it -- after the 16th Amendment is repealed.

It's possible to create a revenue-neutral V.A.T. - cut income taxes at the same time you introduce it - and like magic it's tax-neutral. The idea of turning it into the disingenuously named "FairTax", a replacement of income taxes, isn't viable - but I think you can read George Will's statement as reflective of a faction of budget hawk conservatives who would be happy to replace part of the income tax with a new tax that shifts more of the tax burden to lower wage earners. I do think that there will be difficulty getting a President to sign off on a V.A.T. (although perhaps not if it starts out as being "a favor" to the states, and creating a system that's "more fair" to "Main Street's" brick and mortar stores, and grows from there). But I think it is possible to create a bipartisan majority willing to pass such a tax.

The idea that everyone will hate a V.A.T. may be true, but I'm not aware of any country that has passed such a tax and has later repealed it. I'm not aware of a political party anywhere in the world that has collapsed as a direct consequence of implementing a V.A.T. To put it another way, people hate taxes, period - but we have them, and we pay them.

I think George Will gets this wrong, not numerically but as a matter of perception:

Because the income tax is not broadly based, it radiates moral hazard: Its incentives are for perverse behavior. The top 1 percent of earners provide 40 percent of that tax's receipts; the top 5 percent provide 61 percent; the bottom 50 percent provide 3 percent. So the tax makes a substantial majority complacent about government's growth.

I think most people see about a quarter to a third of their paycheck disappear each month for a range of reasons - state and local taxes, FICA, unemployment taxes, deductions for their contribution to health insurance, even deductions for their contributions to retirement plans - and they see that amount as the amount they paid in "taxes". I suspect that if you asked that "bottom 50 percent" of earners if they paid federal income taxes, most would answer, "Yes, and I pay a lot," simply because they don't differentiate one tax from another.

And wait until the political class's most imperious masters, the elderly, are heard from. When they worked they paid taxes on their incomes; retired, they will resent -- they are virtuosos of resentment -- being taxed when they spend their savings.

Here, Will is of course describing his own demographic - and what appears to be his own mindset. I wonder if he's connected the dots.

I believe it is possible to move toward a more sensible tax policy without implementing a V.A.T., and I think it would be a bad thing to create a V.A.T. CWD, who is perhaps more conservative than George Will, advocates something quite sensible - fixing the federal budget by increasing taxes and cutting spending, even though that necessarily means cutting entitlements and military spending. I suspect that slapping on a V.A.T. would be a band-aid, allowing us to postpone the pain rather than having the difficult conversations that we need to move the nation's budget toward balance and sustainability. We're not going to retreat to what George Will describes as "the Founders' vision of limited government" - why do I picture Will reading Oliver Twist and thinking, "Yeah - workhouses!" - quite literally, the world has changed. But we don't need an entirely new tax before we start the discussion of how to create a sustainable future.

Spinning On An Axis

Michael Tomasky is concerned about developments in the Middle East, and not without cause:

The news broke two days ago across the region about Syria supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles. Syria denies but it seems to be true, and if true it raises the stakes there considerably, because Scuds have a longer range than anything Hezbollah is now assumed to have. What that statement really means, boiled down to its essence, is that they can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The issue thus becoming, will Israel attack Lebanon to try to eliminate the Scuds, effectively proving that Hezbollah with Scuds is no more capable of deterring an attack than was Hezbollah without Scuds? In which case, what's the point of the Scuds?

With regard to Syria, the administration's attempted engagement with Assad has so far been one of its genuine failures. If US overtures to the country are met with responses like this, they're pretty clearly not working. And it gives Syria more influence in Lebanon, which breaks explicit promises Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton made in early visits to Beirut. The poor Lebanese are used to this, alas, and their country typically bears the brunt of these failures -- a war will likely scar its landscape more than Israel's or Syria's.

In fairness to the President, the well was poisoned before he got there. We can imagine alternative histories in which one of Israel's past Prime Ministers sprouted a backbone, stood up to the settlers and negotiated a resolution of the conflict with Syria. We can similarly imagine worlds in which the U.S. embraced the death of Hafez al-Assad as an opportunity to inspire his son, Bashar, to turn away from Iran and embrace modernity. Unfortunately instead we got Bush's foreign policy ineptitude, quickly followed by "Axis of Evil" rhetoric that contributed to Bashar's rejection of sensible measure would have been Syria's best option, using 9/11 as an opportunity to break with its past, negotiate the resolution of its conflict with Israel, and inviting western aid and development.

Tomasky points to Simon Tisdall's theories about why Syria might be interested in giving Scuds to Hezbollah... insurance against another Israeli attack, disappointment that President Obama hasn't "rebooted" the peace process (especially in relation to the Golan Heights), closer collaboration with Hezbollah as part of an effort to re-establish Syrian influence in Lebanon, and highlighting the double standard that Israel can have a huge nuclear arsenal, and for that matter a gargantuan arsenal of conventional arms, rockets and missiles, while most its neighbors are expected to have no appreciable offensive or defensive capacity. But I think he's focusing on the wrong country.

I can't imagine Syria exporting Scuds to Lebanon without the blessing of Iran. This suggests that Iran wants to increase the deterrent effect of attacks from Lebanon that might follow an Israeli attack on Iran, something Israel's been threatening for years. And while it makes little sense for Syria to draw itself into another war in Lebanon, Iran may look at the Israeli invasion and occupation of that nation as "the good old days" - with the U.S. bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel again occupying Lebanon, Iran's need to worry about any concerted military action against its territory will plummet. No doubt other people lose, but from the perspective of Iran the consequences for Lebanon do not appear to be a concern - whether the Scuds increase deterrence or lure Israel into a costly war and occupation, it seems like a win for the mullahs.

Tomasky also links to Blake Hounshell's aptly named article, The dumbest country in the Middle East. With all due respect to Tisdall's speculation on how Syria might benefit from Scuds in Lebanon, Hounshell's perspective seems more accurate to me. The best outcome for Syria in an armed conflict with Israel is that it only gets its nose bloodied. Hounshell speculates that the pressure for the deal is coming from Iran, "to show the West that any strike on its nuclear facilities would be extremely costly for the United States and its allies." Yeah, but what a way to treat those allies.

Is...what?

Not a mistake I would have historically expected from the Globe and Mail.

What's perhaps even more interesting is that a moderator cleaned up some of the comments, but left (presumably lacking authority to edit) the headline. I suspect this is a continuation of the modern media's focus on immediacy crossed with budget cuts for professional editing staff.