Thomas Sowell for curmudgeon-in-chief

I always try to start reading Thomas Sowell with an open mind, but it isn’t easy to finish reading that way when a columnist knows everything, insults everyone he disagrees with, and enjoys his own idiosyncratic leaps of reasoning.

”The big lies and promises from our politicians” (Daily Local News, May 29, 2012) is a case in point.

Sowell thinks politicians are liars and the rest of us demand the impossible—hardly the classical captatio benevolentiae designed to get the reader on the writer’s side, is it?

Contrary to what he says, the United States is not a “welfare state”; it is a free market economy (the usual object of Sowell’s worship) with a threatened safety net for the disadvantaged.

If as he says “After the Constitution of the United States was amended to permit a federal income tax, in 1916, the number of people reporting taxable incomes of $300,000 a year or more fell from well over a thousand to fewer than three hundred by 1921,” could it be that there were and are too many tax loopholes?  Tax-exempt securities, which he mentions, are one of them, but there are also the Cayman Islands, Swiss banks, hedge fund operation, and countless others.

Those who want to tax the wealthy at least as high a percentage as the middle class aren’t so naive as to think that it would balance the budget, but might it help the 99% (and Warren  Buffet) to see more spirit of fairness in the tax system?

Why do writers like Sowell who oppose Social Security always represent it as government money?  Do they forget that workers pay into Social Security out of every pay check?

And doesn’t he know that doctors spend a lot more time filling out diverse paperwork for a host of private insurance companies, all with different forms and procedures, than for Medicare, which has a much lower administrative overhead?

Sure, the government needs to plan ahead better, both in Washington and in Harrisburg; but are soaking the rich and lying to the public really the only options? 

Why does Sowell feel the need to ignore real solutions by fast forwarding apocalyptically to the collapse of Medicare and inflationary disaster?

For Sowell, the end is nigh, the system is broken, and there is no solution—is he running to take over from Cal Thomas the title of editorial curmudgeon-in-chief?

Lest you wonder: personally, I don’t know everything, don’t insult people I disagree with (except Sowell; I thought even Thomas was pretty good on May 30 in “Decision time: America and future wars”), and aim for linear reasoning.

For another classic Sowell case, see his latest, today’s (6/2/12) “World-class chutzpah by Attorney General Holder,” which, on the basis of one supposed action by one person in one voting precinct, purports to show that ALEC-inspired voter ID laws (including in PA) won’t stop anyone legally entitled to vote from voting.

Animal Farm and the demands of history

George Orwell’s Animal Farm was published in August, 1945, the month in which the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and World War II ended.

The Cold War was beginning, and though Orwell’s satire couched as a fairy story derived largely from the Soviet model, its pessimism describes the political realities of the whole 20^th century as he knew it, and frankly it’s hard to see that much has changed since he wrote.

Some of Orwell’s favorite themes are the state’s rewriting of history, the shortness of memory, the silencing of political voices that are out of power, the corruption of those in power, and the mindless hostilities that make real discourse about the state of society impossible.

“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others” (a revised motto of the Animal Revolution) stands with “Four legs good, two legs bad” (another slogan which, bleated over and over by the sheep, served to put an end to public discourse), and “War is Peace” (one of the state’s mottoes in Orwell’s novel 1984) as a cogent warning to our time.

What struck me most of all on rereading Animal Farm this week was the mention, inside the front cover of the Signet Classic paperback edition, of Orwell’s “conviction that modern man was inadequate to cope with the demands of his history.”

What might those demands be?  Well, at least to those who prioritize human existence in a recognizable world, those demands would include, in the American wording, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or, in the French version, liberty, equality, fraternity.

Most of us have lived our whole lives under the threats of nuclear annihilation, environmental destruction, and chemical toxification. But Orwell, writing during World War II, rightly stressed the underlying structure: with some being much “more equal than others,” both among the countries of the world and within each country, strife and injustice continue and will intensify, especially as natural resources run out and the climate turns against us.

I admit that, in the early 1970s I expected nuclear war soon between the US and USSR. It didn’t happen, and the people in charge of the nuclear powers do deserve some credit for avoiding nuclear catastrophes (leaving aside Chernobyl and Fukushima) to this day.

If those world leaders have so far been able to avoid nuclear warfare (excepting Hiroshima and Nagasaki), why can’t they deal with the other less dramatic but also highly destructive underlying problems in a way that shows that we–particularly the generation born in the mid-20^th century—are in fact able “to cope with the demands of our history”?

The lessons of history are, I think, pretty clear: militarism, greed, and the concentration of power will have more and more disastrous results as technology advances.

Could we have some better long-term planning, please, before it’s too late? Or is it already too late?

Non-partisan school board bill hearing 5/4/12

Politics and education don’t mix.  Or at least they shouldn’t, and when they do, there is trouble.

Everyone who spoke at the PA Senate hearing on Thursday May 4 agreed on that principle, and most agreed on the implications.

The hearing was called by the Majority Chairman of the PA Senate Education Committee Jeffrey Piccola (R-15) and the Minority Chairman Andy Dinniman (D-19).  Besides those two senators, staff represented committee members Leach (D-17), Smucker (R-13), and Williams (D-8), also senator Rafferty (R-44) and representatives Schroder (R-155) and Truitt (R-156).

The subject was Senate Bill 327 (formerly, in 2009, SB 1086).  SB 327 was introduced by senators Dinniman (D), Boscola (D), Earll (R), Farnese (D), Piccola (R), and Folmer (R) in 2011—thus, the three top-listed officers of the Committee plus three other senators, in all 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats.  That’s about as bipartisan as it gets in Harrisburg!

As explained in Eric S. Smith, “Nonpartisan school board elections discussed in Downingtown,”  Local News, 5/7/12, SB 327  “would make school board elections in Pennsylvania nonpartisan and eliminate primary elections for those offices.”

As a result, candidates for school board would file petitions with a number of signatures determined by the district’s size, and those who qualify would appear on the November ballot with no indication of party affiliation.

As recounted in that article, Senator Dinniman gave two examples showing the need to take school board elections out of the primaries:

1) The damage done by lame duck board members; e.g., in the Owen J. Roberts district the board, after most of its members lost in the primary, fired a popular superintendent Myra Forrest in 2009.  That got really nasty, embarrassing, and expensive, with citizens mobilizing to get rid of the  lame ducks and Dr. Forrest filing a lawsuit.

For some of the gory details, see “OJR litigation alleges 10 separate violations,” Daily Local, 7/12/09.  The suit cites complaints “…including breach of contract, hostile work environment and state Sunshine Law violations.”

2) The public attention gained by six candidates’ write-in campaign for West Chester Area School Board in 2011, with one of the six winning, showing that the public is tired of partisanship in school board elections.

The November 2011 ballot showed how badly SB 327 is needed.  WCASD voters were faced with a school board ballot consisting (in two different sections, for 4-year and 2-year positions) of:

3 candidates identified as “Republican/Democratic” (who were actually Republicans)
3 candidates identified as “Republican” (who were actually Republicans)
2 candidates identified as “Democratic” (one of whom was actually a Democrat, the other Independent)
6 spaces for write-ins

The write-in candidates distributed a list of their candidates; the Democrats asked voters to vote for 5 or 6 of the write-ins and specifically not to vote for one of the candidates identified on the ballot as “Democratic,” and the Republicans asked their voters to vote straight party line.

Now that’s a pretty absurd way to choose citizens to set policies and budgets for a school district, isn’t it?

As Sue Tiernan, the one successful write-in candidate, described at the hearing, it became apparent in 2009 that the County’s majority party was pressuring candidates and board members to toe an ideological line, and that that party’s endorsements in early spring were actually determining who would be elected to the school board.  In 2009, the November election was a mere formality; the write-in campaign changed that radically in 2011.

As she concluded: “Candidates should run on their backgrounds and their views on education, and a community should be able to choose a school board based not on political party, not on confusing ‘cross-filings,’ but on clear motives and qualifications.”

Idette Groff, representing Conestoga Valley School Board (in Lancaster County) and the PA School Board Association, had less of a sense of urgency; she proposed a task force to study the situation for another year and to tabulate how boards are chosen in other states. 

She cited some variant in different states: no primary if only 1 or 2 candidates vie for a seat (Washington state); the school board chooses whether or not to hold a primary (Minnesota); local option to put board candidates directly on the November ballot (New Jersey); elections in September (Arkansas) or October (Alaska); election in February, with a runoff if needed (Oklahoma); “districts choose from among dates allowed by the state” (Michigan).

She added that an excessive number of candidates could be a problem.  (As in, I guess, even more than the 14 who ran in WCSAD in 2011.)

Sen. Dinniman then pointed out the confusion and cost when, because of political infighting, districts are paying for two or even three superintendents at the same time (the current one and the one or ones who were fired before their contracts expired).  And, he pointed out, board members defeated for cause in a primary can still impose curricular decisions and contracts on their successors elected six months later.

He also cited a 2/11/12 Chesco Intermediate Unit workshop on running for school boards; when participants found out how political the process has become, most decided not to run.

The next speaker, Antonia Keg, had been interested in running for WCASD but was told in spring 2011 that as an Independent, she had little chance of winning in her district if she went through the “nomination papers” route over the summer.  But when she and others saw the unrepresentative ballot resulting from the primary election, she decided to join the write-in slate. 

One of her subsequent frustrations was that the Republican candidates refused to share a forum with the write-ins.  She also cited the damage done by cross-filing and the claim that some candidates were nominated by both parties (since winning a cross-filed primary is not the same thing as nomination). 

The partly successful write-in campaign, she said, alerted voters to the importance of preferring qualifications over politics; and SB 327 would further empower voters to choose school board members to represent the public interest.

She concluded: “Now, more than ever, with our Governor encouraging us to go to our local boards for answers and explanation, we need to insure that those boards consist of committed, open-minded, rational problem-solvers able to enforce the vital connection between a strong school district and a financially sound community.”

As Sen. Dinniman noted, the current system disenfranchises Independents, though Sen. Piccola pointed out there is a process for Independents to file nomination papers over the summer.  (Unfortunately, an Independent on the ballot stands little chance of winning a race dominated by party label, unless there are not enough party candidates to fill all open seats.)

Sen. Dinniman noted that though SB 327 would prevent the parties from limiting who can run, of course the parties, parents, or any interested group could support the candidates of its choice.

Finally, Sharon Kletzien. for the PA League of Women Voters, noted that LWV has supported non-partisan primaries since the 1980s, and it supported cross-filing as an interim step to nonpartisan elections.  Voters need to understand what the candidates represent, but unfortunately, primaries don’t guarantee that: “Party labels can actually detract form the understanding of voters regarding what candidates think about education and the role that they would play on a school board.” 

LWV supports SB 327 as simplifying the election process and broadening the candidate pool.  As she pointed out, forums in the fall would be important for voters to find out about candidates.

You can find out more about SB 327 (including downloads of the formal testimony at the hearing) and related issues at a new web site, Support Non-Partisan School Boards in PA.

Literacy programs and inequality

I was glad to learn that “Two school districts to receive $1.5M for literacy programs” (title of Daily Local article, 5/4/12).

At a time when the state has been cutting back its support for public education and school districts are scrambling to pare budgets and staff, any outside help is welcome.

I have come to believe that inequality is the most devastating problem our society faces.  Terrorism can’t destroy us, but inequality and its consequences can.

An article being passed around the Internet, “The Reign of the One Percenters: Income inequality and the death of culture in New York City” by Christopher Ketcham, Orion magazine, 11-12/11, informs us that according to a 12/10 report by the non-profit Fiscal Policy Institute,

New York … is now at the forefront of the maldistribution of wealth into the hands of the few that has been ongoing in America since 1980, which marked the beginning of a new Gilded Age. Out of the twenty-five largest cities, it is the most unequal city in the United States for income distribution. If it were a nation, it would come in as the fifteenth worst among 134 countries ranked by extremes of wealth and poverty—a banana republic without the death squads. It is the showcase for the top 1 percent of households, which in New York have an average annual income of $3.7 million. These top wealth recipients—let’s call them the One Percenters—took for themselves close to 44 percent of all income in New York during 2007 (the last year for which data is available). That’s a high bar for wealth concentration; it’s almost twice the record-high levels among the top 1 percent nationwide, who claimed 23.5 percent of all national income in 2007, a number not seen since the eve of the Great Depression. During the vaunted 2002–07 economic expansion—the housing-boom bubble that ended in our current calamity, this Great Recession—average income for the One Percenters in New York went up 119 percent…..”

(Those figures are from before the recession began in 2008; I’m not betting on any less unequal data today.)

Chester County isn’t New York City, but it’s not Westchester County, New York, either.  We definitely have families who need early help to bring their children up to the educational level needed to explore our culture, to exercise the rights of citizens, and to contribute to the country’s economy—that is, to get a job.

According to the Daily Local article,

…The Pennsylvania Department of Education has awarded the Coatesville Area School District $1 million for its program and the West Chester Area School District about $500,000 for their own program. The funds come through a state grant program that is funded by the federal government.

…The program is aimed to help students from birth to age 18 with a variety of literacy issues and will even assist students who are not proficient in the English language or are disabled. Pennsylvania is one of only six states selected for the national program.

The specific programs at the schools will attempt to develop literacy skills through professional development, screenings, assessments, targeting of students reading below their grade level and other methods….

Education is the future, and one reason this country is slipping in worldwide influence and statistics is inequality, or, to put it differently, the prevalence of poverty, which obviously affects a family’s ability to help their children educationally.  Many children in our society are well on the road to reading before they enter first grade; but many are not.

For further unfairness, note that pre-school and kindergartens are not required by law, and public funding for them is a likely target for elimination if the current budgetary situation continues.

There can be various reasons for substandard reading skills.  But the point is, at a time when budget pressure is cutting into schools’ ability to prepare children to read at grade level, some needed help is coming from outside. 

That’s what government is for: meeting social priorities.

“Roses,” as DLN would say.

Now I’m updating the next day, May 5.  Who could imagine how complicated a little help could become? To jog your imagination, see “Rumblings” (May 5) at West Chester VOTE:

The understanding is that the following programs would benefit from receipt of the grant money:

Advent Lutheran Preschool
Dilworthtown Christian
Aardvark Childcare & Preschool
West Chester Daycare Center
West Chester Play School
Chester County IU Headstart Program

There are disturbing “rumblings” in the community that West Chester has made the decision to decline the Keystone to Opportunity grant….

According to the CCIU site:

Education on the rise

I wish I could say education itself, in our state and country, is on the rise.  Historically, public education and this country rose together, but unfortunately, our society’s commitment has wavered, with the tragic and counterproductive misallocation of funds and talents in other directions.

As we all know, in our state, funding for both K-12 and higher education is on the wane while inflation marches on.

What is on the rise is education in the public and political consciousness.

Today’s “Education Rally” on the steps of the Historic Courthouse in West Chester brought together, with the organizer, PA Senator Andy Dinniman (D-19), representatives of West Chester University’s faculty union, the WCU undergraduate student body, the Tredyffrin-Easttown School Board, Downingtown West High School, and a parent from Coatesville Area School District.

I thought the speaker quality was high, and the two students spoke impressively.  Well they might, as their generation’s future is at stake.  Actually, more: our whole society’s future is at stake.

Marissa Tremoglie, a high school junior from Downingtown, rightly said we need to educate today’s young to become the leaders of tomorrow.

I’d add: we, as a society, will no doubt have some sort of leaders; but what if they are not educated leaders? Already today, many in prominent positions seem to have no background or interest in science.   It’s no wonder that, in the sciences, so many of our graduate student slots and jobs go to people from other countries.  And actually, one sometimes wonders what sort of background nationally prominent individuals have in literature, history, or foreign languages and cultures, to name just a few other academic disciplines.

“Simply surviving is not acceptable,” said Beth Brindle, the Coatesville parent.  She was referring to public education, but I’d extend that statement o our whole society.  Many sectors of our society aren’t flourishing as they used to; they are, with luck, surviving.  We aren’t a survival society, are we?  We can’t expect prosperity to come out of the blue; it will take a rededication to education.

Even for those who believe money is more important than education, Senator Dinniman pointed out that one dollar in preschool education saves $16 in later social services.  And to think that pubic kindergarten is not legally required in Pennsylvania and may soon be on the chopping block as the funding crisis continues to develop.

Unacceptable!

Tomorrow’s Daily Local News will give more details, I’m sure.

Also tomorrow, as described in a May 2 Daily Local News article,

The Senate Education Committee will hold a public hearing at 1 p.m. at the STEM Academy Friday concerning Sen. Andy Dinniman’s bill to take bipartisan politics out of school board elections.

Dinniman, D-19th of West Whiteland, who serves as minority chair in the committee, said his Senate Bill 327 would put an end to partisan school board elections for the betterment of communities and school districts throughout the Commonwealth.

“Pennsylvania is one of only a handful of states in the union that still allow partisan school board elections,” Dinniman said. “It is time for that to change. My legislation would shift the focus of school board elections from political differences to the real educational and fiscal issues at stake.”

Under Senate Bill 327, the names of individuals seeking election to school boards would appear on ballots without any political party affiliation. …

What (beside Senator Dinniman, who has had a long career in higher education and earlier was a school board member) is the connection to this evening’s rally?

Education is threatened today because the political system has lost its former consensus to support it.  Political elements have turned against it for various ideological reasons.

Should education and the future of today’s young be at the whim of political parties?  Of course not.  Politics and education don’t mix well together, for sure!

Therefore, Senate Bill 327 proposes a measure to get the politicking out of Pennsylvania school boards.  That will be a good start toward educational recovery in our state!

How redistricting became a hot issue

What happened and what happens next?

Come and find out more in a forum (which includes the individuals mentioned below) Saturday April 21, 10 a.m., at West Chester Borough Hall, 401 E. Gay St., West Chester.

Redistricting is far more than just a question of where the boundaries are put.  Redistricting is big news, a continuing source of confusion, and an exercise in increasing and public’s respect for the PA constitution confidence in government.

County repercussions

The original fall 2011 state redistricting plan would have split West Chester and Phoenixville, among other municipalities, into two state house districts.  That plan was struck down by the State Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

On April 12, the state Reapportionment Commission came out with a new plan that still splits Phoenixville and instead of West Chester splits West Goshen.

Is this second plan—which does split fewer total municipalities than the first—constitutional?  Time (and the PA Supreme Court) will tell.

Redistricting of West Chester Borough

West Chester itself is required to reapportion its voting precincts due to population changes.

The first plan that the Borough submitted was rejected by Voter Services because it tried to divide the census tract consisting of West Chester University dorms.  A new plan is being worked on. 

Unless a solution is found, ward 5 (the southwest sector of the Borough) will become an almost entirely student ward and no other ward will have any on-campus students.

Read on for the full story to date….

The state and the 156th district

On Jan. 25, the PA Supreme Court by a 4-3 margin struck down the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission’s abusive redistricting of PA House and Senate.

(Congressional districts are beyond the scope of the PA constitution, though, and the Borough will move from the 16th to the newly gerrymandered 6th as of next January.)

Thus, the plan to split West Chester between the 156th and 160th State House districts collapsed and the 2001 boundaries remains in force for this year’s legislative elections.

The victory is that much sweeter for West Chester because Mayor Carolyn Comitta and Borough Council President Holly Brown led the Borough’s appeal, and indefatigable West Chester resident lawyer Sam Stretton managed the Borough’s appeal as well as Phoenixville’s.

For more background and links, see “PA Supreme Court redistricting opinion favors appellants” at the Chester County Dem site.

Just as the appellants urged, the Court concluded that the whole PA House and Senate redistricting proposed in late 2011 violated the state constitution.  You can download the Court’s full opinion here.

Of the 12 appeals, the Court particularly praised (p. 8) the one by Allentown citizen Amanda Holt:

“…we find that the 2011 Final Plan is contrary to law because appellants — in particular, the appellants in Holt v. 2011 Legislative Reapportionment Commission, 7 MM 2012, and to a lesser extent, the appellants in Costa v. 2011 Legislative Reapportionment Commission … — … have demonstrated that the Final Plan, considered as a whole, contains numerous political subdivision splits that are not absolutely necessary, and the Plan thus violates the constitutional command to respect the integrity of political subdivisions. Furthermore, in their challenge, the appellants have shown that the LRC could have easily achieved a substantially greater fidelity to all of the mandates in [PA Constitution] Article II, Section 16 — compactness, contiguity, and integrity of political subdivisions — yet the LRC did not do so in the Final Plan.”

The Court said (pp. 57-58) exactly what the West Chester appellants wanted to hear about not splitting communities:

“…the constitutional commands and restrictions on the process exist precisely as a brake on the most overt of potential excesses and abuse.  Moreover, the restrictions recognize that communities indeed have shared interests for which they can more effectively advocate when they can act as a united body and when they have representatives who are responsive to those interests.”

And (p. 79), though somewhat qualified, is what West Chester wanted to hear about the “absolutely necessary” clause of the state constitution:

“…we trust that the LRC, in formulating its new plan, and necessarily reducing the political subdivision splits and fractures, will be attentive to the concerns of historically unified subdivisions, such as County seats. In the end, however, we recognize that the Pennsylvania Constitution permits absolutely necessary political subdivision splits, and that some divisions are inevitable.”

West Chester

So the redistricting news for West Chester is all good?  Unfortunately not!

Like the state, the Borough is required to redistrict its wards after each decennial census to get them back to approximate population equality.  The 2010 census showed that (as of two years ago, which is the date that counts now) wards 1, 2, 3, and 6 needed more residents and wards 4, 5, and 7 needed fewer.

So last fall, based on calculations by Borough Manager Ernie McNeely, the PZBID Committee and Borough Council accepted new ward boundaries, notably moving West Chester University’s two new dorms (Allegheny and Brandywine, totalling over 1,200 beds) from ward 5 to ward 3 to make up for the two dorms that were demolished in ward 3 where the Student Recreation Center is rising at the SE corner of Sharpless and New streets.

The Court of Common Pleas approved (as required because of the settlement, a quarter century ago, that created the ward system to end the racial discrimination inherent in at-large voting).

But then, Chester County Voter Services said it could not accept the Borough’s plan because it split a census tract, the one where so many dorms are located, and the Census Bureau says census tracts can be changed only before, not after, a census.  Thus, it says those two dorms have to go back into ward 5, which will have far more students than non-students, as it will contain 7 dorms.  (Ward 4 would also lose its one dorm, as McCarthy Hall is slated for replacement by a non-residential building; and the South Campus dorms are in East Bradford.)

This is the reverse of the state problem: the Borough wanted its wards to be compact, diverse, and representative, but the government says we can’t!

At the time of the census, the dorms in ward 5 had 2,297 beds (beds, not occupants, are what the census counts for dorms) and the average population of the redistricted wards should be around 2,637 (= 1/7 of the Borough’s 2010 population).

So, barring some unforeseen solution, the future ward 5 has room for only about 340 non-students, unless the circumstances can justify a larger imbalance with the other wards.  And when another new dorm is completed, there would be about 3,000 students in ward 5.  Ward 5, the 90% student ward—it could be interesting

Students are a valuable resource and the leaders of the future, but will undergraduates have the desire, commitment, and time to be Borough Council members, election officials, and party committeepersons?  We may have from 2014 to 2021 (when the next redistricting will take place) to find out the answer.

“Rich people don’t have jobs”

The image below appears in a 4/16/12 post “Rich people don’t have jobs” by Doug Muder at The Weekly Sift:

The image itself comes from a 12/28/11 post on The Blogmocracy, a site that appears to be dedicated to whatever political or social remark anyone wants to make.

This element in a building frieze (judging by the presence of pigeons at the lower left), entitled “Heroic consumerism” in a post by coldwarrior under the heading “More Socialist Realism” at Blogmocracy, appears to me nicely inscrutable:

Is it an exaltation of the democratic economy, in the style of the attractive period-piece murals inside the 30th Street Station?

Is it a comment on George Bush’s celebrated post-9/11 advice “Go shopping” (with perhaps the subtext that his father, running for president, showed that he did not know how to check out his purchases at a supermarket)?

Is it a denunciation (note the overflowing shopping cart) of the excesses of our consumer economy?

Or is it, as Muder presumably takes it, a comment on gender inequality in our society, since the man of the family, majestically showing the way forward, seems to have only a tenuous grasp on the front of the shopping cart, and the woman, even held back by two children, is clearly doing the hard pushing?

What can Muder mean by “Rich people don’t have jobs”? 

He means “Rich people don’t have jobs, they have hobbies”—which he explains this way:

You know what a job is? It’s something you do because you need to eat, or because your family is counting on you. You don’t necessarily hate it, and maybe you’d even keep doing it if you didn’t have to. (I used to get my hair cut by an 80ish guy who just liked feeling useful and talking to people. He told great stories about barbering on luxury trains back in the day.) But that’s the whole point: If it’s really a job, you dohave to.

That’s the only test that counts. It’s not how hard you work, it’s what happens if you stop. If quitting means real hardship for you or your family, you have a job. If you keep at it even though you could spend the rest of your life skipping rocks at your house by the lake, you have a hobby….

And he continues, about Ann Romney:

For all I know, she could have changed all the diapers, nursed all the colds, and packed all the lunch boxes. If so, she must have been reasonably good at it, because the kids seem to have turned out fine.

But here’s what makes all the difference: She didn’t have to. If Ann lifted a finger around the kitchen or nursery, it was because she wanted to. She found it satisfying, it was part of her identity, or she had some other motive unconnected to necessity. If her search for fulfillment ever turned her in a different direction, an upscale domestic-help agency could have dispatched an armada of well-qualified maids and cooks and nannies to Romney Manor in no time at all….

So that is an interesting concept: If you don’t have to do it, it’s not a job, but a hobby. 

Some people in or near the Romneys’ or McCains’ income level (notice I’m not saying “tax bracket”) might say: “But I have to work, because we have to pay for the houses and horses and cruises and airplanes, and without all that I would lose all self-respect and the family, which is counting on me, would be miserable living below the style to which they are accustomed.”

So we need to define “we have to do it” as “important for economic survival.”  Actually, might that concept might bear discussion as a guideline for government spending?

I encourage you to read Muder’s blog and also Ruth Marcus’ column “Privilege and motherhood and politics” in today’s Daily Local News.  As Marcus says:

Hilary Rosen made a legitimate point the wrong way….

Rosen’s fundamental point — that Ann Romney’s experience is far from typical, that she has not grappled with the economic and family issues that face many women today — remains true…

As Marcus concludes, if a presidential candidate presents his wife as an expert on what American women want, “she is decidedly on-limits.”  Imagine the uproar if Hillary Clinton had presented her husband as an expert on what American men want!

Ultimately, I think, in our varied society, the more backgrounds we get information and advice from, the better.  So here—free advice—is Mitt’s opportunity to assemble some women of varied economic levels, sit down with them, and listen.

That might not be a job for him, but it could be a very useful new hobby.

Titanic

Happy Titanic Day (100th anniversary of the disaster, 4/15/1912)!

“Untergang der Titanic” by Willy Stöwer, 1912, from Wikipedia

And tax day isn’t till the 17th this year, so we have time for poetry and reflection. 

I couldn’t resist digging out a poem I wrote a few years ago, when, like I’m sure many of us, I began reading up on the Titanic. I guess I believe we can learn something from disasters; see “The Night of the Bulldozers” (poem written as the US invasion of Iraq was about to begin) and my blog about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

By the way, next time you’re in Halifax N.S., don’t miss the museum with Titanic artifacts and displays, since the survivors were taken to that nearest port.

Of course, we all think of the movie, and of the theme, more and more significant for our civilization, of human hubris and lack of judgment.  I also think about it as I am reading Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here (blog upcoming on that).

But in the poem, I wanted to take a different twist, as you’ll see:

Titanic
 
Why doesn’t anyone ever think

of the iceberg?  It was just minding its business,

floating south.  It was born of two glaciers meeting

in Greenland, end of the century, up on the ice shelf;

year after year it advanced to the edge of the land

and, pushed like the lemming at the head of the pack,

took the cool plunge.  Schooled in iceberg behavior

by rumors that gulls carried back from the seas,

it knew to float a year or two on Baffin Bay,

then, still prodigious, curve down the coast:

Labrador, Newfoundland, Great Banks….

It was so new, so big, it never thought

to look around for ships’ bridges, crow’s nests,

lights in the night.  Maybe it would have tried to give

an extra blue gleam or calve off one of its cliffs with a splash

to warn the sailors who’d left their binoculars behind

in Southampton.  But it did not, and in sorrow

it showered crystal down on the stricken deck.

Years later the National Enquirer wrote that survivors

roamed, living like wolves without fire,

eating raw fish and albatrosses, on its high slopes,

till the last was rescued, hardly aged at all, in 1995;

but that wasn’t true: on its frozen skin, nothing survived.

Since, born of the land, it had no more salt than a Canada

lake, it could have been towed to some thirsty place,

its sides carved bit by bit as the waters around it

grew warm by degrees, but still huge enough

to water an Aden or Yemen for months.

But that’s not what happened.  Slowly

it drifted, avoiding the shipping lanes now, setting

more records that no one noticed, till in midsummer,

down Bermuda way, having tasted the sweetness

of the Gulf Stream, it shrank to the size of a hamlet, a house,

a garage, a refrigerator, an ice cube, nothing at all.

How it recalled, through its long trail sowing freshness,

unheeded by ships but courted by gulls

seeking respite from salt, the crash of its young April,

the cries and the drownings around it, then quiet, all

the slow fading that drew it reluctantly back

to nothingness spread thin on the wide Atlantic.

 

Santorum and the Dutch

It’s clear by now that Rick Santorum’s political star is setting; or perhaps a planetary metaphor would be more apt, since he seems to come around every 6 years (watch out, 2018!).  

There is a broader lesson in the setting of his political fortunes.  His world view is just too limited and ideological to appeal to a majority; and one reason it is so limited is his lack of respect for people who don’t share his background and views, such as foreigners—a lack of respect whose technical diagnosis is xenophobia.

On Feb. 15, in “Foreign languages and cultural literacy,” I reflected on the anti-French prejudice that has put Mitt Romney under attack  because he spent two and a half years in France and (like, as it happens, John Kerry and Newt Gingrich) actually speaks the language of Voltaire and Proust.

John Huntsman also got clobbered because (as many of us would hope of an ambassador to the world’s most populous country) he speaks Chinese.

Rick Santorum entered those sweepstakes by attacking the Dutch, as we can read in a New York Times blog, “Dutch Puzzled by Santorum’s False Claim of Forced Euthanasia” by Robert Mackey, 2/22/12. 

I’ll start with a sample from a online comment on that article by Thoughtful Woman (Oregon):

There’s a lot of demonizing and code wording going on in the right wing lexicon with regard to countries and territories. It used to be only poor France that was so maligned, as in l’Histoire (ridicule) des Freedom Fries.

Now, when you say England or Canada, you mean: socialized medicine, aka Obamacare. (Massachusetts is a synonym for England or Canada in this particular atlas.)

When you say Greece, you mean what America has become under Obama’s failed socialist policies….

Holland? That’s where they kill Grandma to save money, or perhaps where Obama got the idea for the death panels in the first place….

Here are some points from the New York Times article (which includes a brief video where Santorum comes out with demonstrably imaginary charges) at a forum hosted by James Dobson, the conservative leader:

The Dutch Embassy in Washington declined to comment on Wednesday on recent remarks by Rick Santorum, the Republican presidential candidate, in which he claimed, falsely, that forced euthanasia accounts for 5 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands.

An embassy spokeswoman, Carla Bundy, explained that the Dutch government preferred not to intervene in an American political campaign. But Ms. Bundy did provide The Lede with documents and official statistics showing that there are no provisions of Dutch law that permit forced euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia, which has been legal since 2002, accounted for about 2 percent of deaths in the Netherlands in 2010.

As Jonathan Turley, a legal blogger, explained on Monday, the Dutch law permitting euthanasia is unambiguous about the requirement that it be voluntary, and lawmakers mandated that each case be carefully reviewed by an expert panel….

Mr. Santorum’s remarks were not audible in video highlights of the “American Heartland” forum in Columbia, Miss., on his official YouTube channel — edited, music video style, to a driving rock beat. But his claims about the Netherlands were posted on YouTube by Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way. That video showed Mr. Santorum claiming that elderly Dutch people wear a bracelet reading “Do not euthanize me.” Over audible gasps from the audience, he continued:

    Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year — and it’s 10 percent of all deaths for the Netherlands — half of those people are euthanized involuntarily, at hospitals, because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they’re afraid because of budget purposes that they will not come out of that hospital if they go into it with sickness….

Mr. Santorum’s campaign did not respond to a request to explain who or what the candidate’s sources were. Glenn Kessler, who writes The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog, suggested on Wednesday that the candidate was repeating unsubstantiated rumors found online.

    A Web site known as Right Wing News last year published an article which asserted that “over 10,000 (Dutch) citizens carry ‘Do not euthanize me’ cards in case they are ever admitted to a hospital unexpectedly.” The source was the Louisiana Right to Life Federation, which in turn cited no specific source except possibly the Nightingale Alliance, which opposes euthanasia. But this group does not appear to have published any actual figures….

The Washington Post’s fact-checker awarded Santorum’s inventive claim the maximum of four Pinocchios (for a wealth of similar comments, plus a few pro-Santorum defenses, google Santorum / Dutch / euthanasia). 

The scariest part of all is that these malevolent inventions fly around until they take on a life of their own.  Santorum (along with his followers, however many those may be at this point) seems to believe the charges he made because he saw or heard them in some source that got it from somewhere else, and suddenly people are talking about Palinesque “death panels.”

Actually, what does it matter what the Dutch do?  After all, Santorum is campaigning for president of the United States, not champion of anti-Europe.

There’s a big complicated world out there, and the American public seems to be realizing that the Bush model of waiting till after inauguration to find out about it doesn’t serve our national interests well.

Gas prices: it’s the market not the government

We’ve been reading a lot about the price of gas lately, especially in political discourse.

Republican presidential candidates, who routinely pay homage to small government, seem to want big government to step in and reduce gas prices.

Newt Gingrich has pledged, without any shred of evidence that he or big government knows how to or can do it, to reduce the gas price to $2.50 a gallon if (a big if, so he can promise away) he becomes president.

The Daily Local News editorial “Refinery closings not the reason for soaring gas prices” (3/1/12) says quite rightly that if we want to blame someone, it’s the free market, not the government.

The economist Robert Reich’s 2/20/12 blog “The Gas Wars” attributes the rising price of gas to Iran’s cutting off oil exports to Britain and France, “rising hopes for a global economic recovery,” and “overwhelming bets of hedge funds and other money managers.”

The third of these factors, speculation, bids up future prices out of line with actual need for the product.  The speculators’ dream has always been to “corner the market,” that is, to profit by controlling a major part of supplies and driving up prices. 

In “Why Republicans Aren’t Mentioning the Real Cause of Higher Prices at the Gas Pump” (3/15/12), Reich emphasizes speculation:

“…the rise in gas prices has almost nothing to do with energy policy. It has everything to do with America’s continuing failure to adequately regulate Wall Street…. 

“…Wall Street is betting on higher oil prices in the future — and that betting is causing prices to rise….

“Financial speculators historically accounted for about 30 percent of oil contracts, producers and end users for about 70 percent. But today speculators account for 64 percent of all contracts….”

Kevin Drum, “Q&A: What’s Going on With Gasoline Prices?” at Mother Jones, 3/2/12, runs through some of those factors and sums up:

“…here’s the main takeaway: Demand for oil is pushing up against supply limits, and that’s a permanent condition. From now on, demand is always going to be bumping up against supply limits because even if supply rises a bit in the future, demand is rising even faster. And when supply and demand are that tightly constrained, every small bump in demand or disruption in supply causes a big swing in prices. Last year it was the war in Libya that caused a price spike. This year it’s Iran. But it’s always going to be something. It doesn’t take much anymore to produce a $30 swing in oil prices….”

And here is Drum’s conclusion:

“Q: Do you have any good news to share?

“A: Not really. New shale oil finds in North Dakota might increase global supplies a bit, but probably not enough to make up for increasing demand from China and other emerging economies. Basically, prices are going to stay high for the foreseeable future; even small supply disruptions are likely to cause big price gyrations; and big supply disruptions are likely to cause full-blown recessions. Like it or not, this is our future. I recommend you buy a motorcycle.”

Similarly, Robert B. Semple Jr., “Obama Sets Gas Prices?  Just another G.O.P. Myth” (New York Times, 3/18/12, p. SR 10), also emphasizes the price of oil, while showing that US oil production has actually gone up and use of foreign oil down in Obama’s presidency so far. 

These charts sum up his analysis:

Since gas is refined from oil, and US production is up and consumption down, what is pushing up oil prices then?  Since “global prices move in tandem,” and much faster than supply and demand move, it’s pretty obvious to me that speculation is hard at work.

Besides acknowledging the role of political instability in the Middle East and speculation, the Daily Local editorial also claims that “The price of oil is going up, in part, because the value of a dollar is going down.  I’m just not seeing that. 

Currencies fluctuate, but the US dollar is now where it was against Canadian currency 4 years ago, Mexican 3 years ago,  Nigerian 2 1/2 years ago, Venezuelan 2 years ago, and Saudi 4 years ago.  Compared to a year ago, the dollar shows no big rise or fall against any of those currencies—which happen to be those of our 5 chief foreign suppliers of oil—or against the euro or British pound either, for that matter.

In thinking comparatively, we should also recall that comparisons to past highs do not take inflation into account.  According to the US Department of Energy, regular conventional gas last spiked (to $4.054 a gallon in the US (compared to around $9 in UK, France, and Germany, incidentally) in July 2008.  $4.054 has now inflated to around $4.196 (at 3.5% inflation for that period according to InflationData.com; I’m surprised, I thought it would be higher).  And we aren’t there yet.

In 1973-74, to counteract the spike in oil prices brought on by the Arab oil embargo, the Nixon administration imposed oil price controls in the US (resulting in the inevitable shortages).

How could government control prices without reducing supply?  China owns that country’s two main refiners, sets the price of gas, and subsidizes some gas users (LA Times, 3/20/12). 

“In a few Latin America and Middle-East nations, such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, oil is produced by a government-owned company and local gasoline prices are kept low as a benefit to the nation’s citizens” (CNN).

Or, theoretically, the government could try to hold down prices by forbidding petroleum export—which currently occurs, and no doubt more so if the XL Pipeline moves Canadian oil to the Caribbean. 

However, such “big government” measures seem highly unlikely today, to say the least!

My guess is that we are just going to be living with factors beyond our government’s influence: the free market, supply and demand, and speculation as usual.  On the positive side, at around $108 per barrel, we’re not near a record oil price, which was set in July 2008 (3.5% of inflation ago) at a shade over $147.

The irony is that as speculators bid up the price of oil, they can slow the economy, and that in turn can bring down the price of oil. 

Meanwhile, I’m not sure about motorcycles, but why not dust off the bicycle for doing local errands?