At a recent meeting at my college–a private, religiously-affiliated, school–one of my colleagues criticized a local philanthropist (who has given generously to my college) for their support of a private, church-run K-12 school in my town, complaining that the school has drained “thousands” (an overstatement, but hundreds certainly) of students from the public education system.
And what have we done differently?
A very long response to a typically inaccurate liberal critique of libertarianism.
Libertarians come in many flavors, but I think most of them would agree that in an ideal world, the government would be very small and have limited powers – essentially, the government would control national defense and perhaps adjudicate over property rights disputes (i.e., maintain police and/or the courts). Otherwise, people would be free to engage in whatever activities they wished provided the specific purpose of that activity was to harm a third party.
OK, as a general introduction this is fine, although I’m sure he meant to include the word “not” in that final clause.
Based on conversations with libertarians, I believe negative externalities, or inadvertent harm to third parties is OK. I have yet to have a discussion with a libertarian and come away thinking: now this is a person who views negative externalities as an intrusion on someone else’s private property requiring government intervention to halt. (If I am incorrect about this, I’ll be happy to stand corrected… but it has little effect on the rest of this post.)
He is wrong, and it makes me wonder how many different “flavors” of libertarians he’s actually talked to. Continue reading
[Here's another old draft I never previously published.]
I heard this in the bathroom of a bar in Belize.
What do you call two Mexicans playing basketball?
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Juan on Juan.
What do you call two Mexican firemen?
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Jose and hose B.
What do you call a Mexican flying an airplane?
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What are you, a racist? You call him a pilot!
[Scanning through draft posts to see what I never got around to putting up, I found this. It's pretty untimely now, but it's still worth putting out there.]
Meanwhile, Rick Perry is proposing a part-time Congress, desperately hoping to play on the institution’s current 9% approval rating to rebuild his crumbling presidential hopes. It’s amusing to see a so-called conservative basing his campaign on a platform of radical constitutional change. This is, of course, the kind of thing a president simply can’t do. Article 5 of the Constitution governs the amendment process, and provides no role at all for the president. Of course he can submit a proposed amendment to Congress, assuming the House and Senate leadership is willing to do anything more than ignore it. Now imagine President Perry sending Congress such a proposed constitutional amendment and expecting 2/3 of each house to approve slashing their own pay and limiting their own effective authority. I don’t know about you, but I would hold my breath waiting for it to happen. And let’s not be coy about the real effect of such a proposal, which is a massive shift of governing power to the executive branch. Thank god this pecker-headed piss-ant politician will never be president.
One of my students who watches Rachel Maddow passed this on to me. Apparently the Republican controlled Michigan state legislature is playing games with the legislative process. The Michigan Constitution requires that new laws take effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session, unless a 2/3 supermajority votes to have it take effect immediately. Republicans don’t have enough votes to do so, but have presumably put about 90% of the laws they’ve passed this session into effect immediately. Instead of having a roll call vote on the issue of immediate effect the presiding officer is calling the vote, and immediately banging his gavel, claiming there was a sufficient vote in favor (watch the clip in the video at about 12:45.)
That kind of quick vote isn’t unusual in politics, but this particular use of it is. Maddow (who seems to me not as bright as her reputation would have it*) finds this shocking. I don’t. I find it mildly amusing and ultimately fairly predictable. That said, I support the Democrats’ lawsuit trying to block immediate effect of these bills and hope they are successful.
Unfortunately, this video demonstrates much of what is wrong with personality-driven political talk shows. To cover enough time she has to add lots of extra blather that doesn’t really say much. And she also spends plenty of time complaining about Michigan’s emergency manager law, and how it is “destroying democracy” at the local level. That’s a lot of nonsense and demonstrates that Maddow is essentially operating ideologically rather than thinking deeply about the issue. There is no requirement for local level democracy in the U.S.–states have, and always have had, authority to create and uncreate local governments. As well emergency managers are explicitly temporary beings. And they are assigned only in cases where local democracy has failed abysmally and the local governmental unit is so indebted and incapable of managing its own finances that they are, or are going to be, displacing their costs onto the rest of the state. Maddow seems to think that forced riders have no right to a say in the decisions of those who are forcing them to bear costs, and that the state cannot legitimately intervene in such cases. Basically the emergency manager is just a form of receiver for a local governmental unit that’s functionally bankrupt.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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* Yes, she has a doctorate in politics from Oxford and was a Rhodes scholar. I won’t pretend I can top or equal that. But she doesn’t give me the impression of someone who ever understood that political science is about something more than ideological politics, and those types of folks are a dime a dozen. As both my undergrad and graduate mentor tried to impress upon me, there’s a difference between analysis and advocacy. Maddow superficially gives the appearance of doing analysis, but really she’s doing advocacy with pretty superficial analysis.
With Rick Santorum dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, leaving the field to Mitt Romney, President Obama claims;
This election will probably have the biggest contrast that we’ve seen maybe since the Johnson-Goldwater election, maybe before that,
I actually laughed out loud in the car this morning when I heard that. Maybe, just maybe, if it had been Romney who dropped out, setting up an Obama-Santorum race, the statement might have just the slightest claim to plausibility. But Obama-Romney? A race between a Democrat that liberals find too conservative and a Republican that conservatives find too liberal?
I know it’s obligatory to make these kinds of claims, so this isn’t really a critique of Obama. But this claim is so laughably wrong that I just want to take a moment to note the races we’ve actually had since Johnson-Goldwater, for purposes of comparison.
1968: Humphrey-Nixon. The civil rights liberal vs. the southern strategy. A guy who only cared about domestic social issues vs. a guy who only cared about foreign affairs.
1972: Nixon-McGovern. The man who expanded the Vietnam War in Cambodia vs. the guy who wanted to end the war immediately.
1976: Ford-Carter. OK, the 2012 choice might, perhaps, be starker than that one.
1980: Carter-Reagan. Ol’ Doom and Gloom vs. Mr. Morning in America.
1984: Reagan-Mondale. A true, although not radical, conservative vs. a Minnesota liberal.
1988: G.H.W. Bush-Dukakis. A moderate New England Republican vs. a New England liberal…sounds like a lot like 2012, if you change that to Illinois Republican vs. New England liberal.
1992: G. H. W. Bush-Clinton. Eh, ok. Bookends, policywise. Worlds apart in demeanor.
1996: Clinton-Dole. Two moderates…again, sounds a lot like 2012.
2000: Gore-G.W. Bush. No, that wasn’t a stark choice at all, was it? An environmental liberal vs. radical conservatives.
2004: G.W. Bush-Kerry. A man who had first-hand understanding of the horrors of war vs. a draft-dodger and his gang of chickenhawks
2008: McCain-Obama. OK, true, this wasn’t actually that stark a choice, despite what any of us may have thought then. But it’s a bit funny that Obama is belatedly admitting–albeit indirectly–that he and McCain weren’t so different after all.
But if you can’t find a starker choice in that list than what we currently face, you’re not old enough to vote.
Just a quickie post, stimulated by doing some grading.
It’s often said that high school and college education has declined in the U.S., But I don’t think that’s something we actually know.
One example that’s often used is a purported high school graduation exam from the late 19th century, which poses questions very few of us could answer today, such as;
As Snopes correctly notes,
What [critics] fail to grasp is “I can’t answer these questions” is not the same thing as “These questions demonstrate that students in earlier days were better educated than today’s students. Just about any test looks difficult to those who haven’t been recently steeped in the material it covers”
There are multiple reasons why we don’t know that education that answered those questions was superior to today’s education. First, we don’t know how well the students retained that knowledge. Second, some of those things we don’t teach today because we’re teaching other things that we have decided are more important. You don’t have to agree that everything that in schools today is valuable to agree that knowing that Juan Fernandez is a set of islands off the coast of Chile may not be among the crucial elements of knowledge for success and happiness in the 21st century. We also don’t know the extent to which teachers taught to the test–we tend to assume that’s a contemporary phenomena, but with a test like that (assuming it’s real, which we also don’t know), did anyone back there face different incentives than teachers to today?
Finally, and this is the real issue for me. We don’t know how strictly those alleged tests were graded. I can give as hard a test as I want and let everyone pass by not grading too strictly. Consider the third question above, on the causes and effects of the Revolutionary War. That’s an essay question, open to as subjective a grading standard as any other essay question. When we interpret this, we tend to assume students had to offer a fairly sophisticated explanation, but how do we know that “The king taxed the colonists too much, so they got angry and rebelled and created the best country on earth” isn’t at least a “B” answer by the expectations of those grading the tests?
There are problems with K-12 education today. From my own subjective perspective as someone who teaches recent high school graduates, the fundamental problems are a disinterest in reading, a lack of critical thinking skills, and lack of mathematical competency. When I left high school nearly 30 years ago, I indisputably lacked mathematical competency, I’m pretty damn sure my critical thinking skills were not at the level I thought they were, and while I loved to read I hated reading textbooks (I think students hatred of reading for classes is more a function of bad textbook writing than lack of interest in reading–J.K. Rowling didn’t make her billions solely off the movies and apparel). Do we have actual evidence that it was any different 80 years ago, or 100 years ago?
We don’t, and the alleged test is not evidence that it was different back then. It is at best a proxy measure, and not a particularly strong one.
What to make of President Obama’s comments on judicial activism?
I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.
On the one hand, I always enjoy a good mocking of conservatives on this issue. And you know damn well they’ll be cheering this particular countermajoritarian decision if the Court does indeed strike down the law, and wholly missing–yet again–the irony.
On the other hand, Obama seems quite serious, not at all tongue-in-cheek. The language conveys that he’s not just poking at hypocritical conservatives.
“…unprecedented…step…” Where’s Inigo Montoya when you need him?*
“…that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” Really? Our Constitutional Law Professor-in-Chief is unfamiliar with the concept of judicial review?
“[S]trong majority of…Congress?” Eh? Surely the passage of a mere 16 months hasn’t been long enough for him to start romantically over-remembering the size of the Democratic majority that squeaked the law through on a strict party line vote?**
“…I’m confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.” So Obama wants the Supreme Court to rule based on politics, rather than having any niggling little worries about constitutionality?***
I’m inclined to take the President at face value here. He’s shown in enough other ways that he doesn’t believe in the rule of law. Despite right-wing claims about him being a nasty elitists, he’s just a classic old-time populist, pure majority rule, kind of politician. At the time I voted for him I didn’t like him much, but I didn’t deeply despise him. I no longer remember why.
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* “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
** To be clear, I not suggesting that the narrow margin of victory is politically problematic. But margins of victory also aren’t legally relevant.
*** That’s not a claim that the law is unconstitutional, only that its constitutionality should be the only consideration of the Court, however it rules.
Al Jazeera reports increasing western involvement in the Syrian uprising.
An international coalition including the United States, the United Kingdom and several Arab states, has pledged to send millions of dollars in aid and equipment to Syria’s opposition groups, signalling a deeper international involvement in the conflict there.
Meanwhile, Sarah Mousa provides valuable background on the Assad regime and the beginnings of the revolt.
Together, the stories of Salma, Marwa and Mohamed suggested some of the reasons that the revolution in Syria is a longer process than elsewhere in the region. Not only was the fear barrier higher, due to the brutality of the regime, a systematic fragmentation of the country and atmosphere of distrust forged over the past four decades had first to be undone. The persistence of demonstrations in Daraa, a city relatively untouched by the divisive mechanisms of the Assad clan, is indicative of the type of societal atmosphere needed for a successful mass movement.
The debate on the previous thread, along with PPACA (or ACA, as now seems to be the increasingly common terminology) discussions at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen and elsewhere have got me thinking about the health care market. Not the health insurance market, mind you, but the health care market. So let me throw out some incompletely formed thoughts on the matter. Let me note a few things upfront. First, I am purposely taking a non-normative approach on this, so normative critiques will be beside the point–I want to figure out a positive statement of how the world is structured, rather than–at this moment–talk about what we ought to do. Please feel free to critique that positive statement, but please try to avoid jumping immediately to normative claims. Second, I’m just feeling my way here, so if you have a critique, please approach it in a manner of people working together to come to an understanding. If you prefer just to attack and condemn, I’m not particularly in the mood for that right now so I’ll probably just delete those comments without response. That doesn’t mean you can’t be blunt if you think I’ve made a factual error–I’m not a delicate flower, but I do want this thread to stay on point and be productive.
So here’s the initial point of consideration–the common claim that the health care market is fundamentally different from other markets. I think this is untrue, that health care is different only in degree, not in kind. To get there, we have to begin with a simplified model, looking at the health care market absent insurance.
The most common claim I’ve heard is that in the health insurance market you can’t shop around. After all, if you have a heart attack or stroke, you don’t have time to shop around. But A) this is not unique to health care and B) it assumes a false temporal starting point. Continue reading
