Mr. Alec: 08/01/2005

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Fareed Zakaria

There was a great article that I stumbled upon yesterday that is a bio of Fareed Zakaria. It is interesting to read if you follow Fareed at all, but the interesting part was the discussion about his television show on PBS Foreign Exchange:

Zakaria may be the pundit world's answer to the Backstreet Boys, but there's nothing sexy about Foreign Exchange. It has the standard muted tones of a serious news program, complete with generic set and antiquated electronic theme music. "People ask how we'll distinguish ourselves from the competition," Zakaria says animatedly. "What competition? There's literally not another show on American television that deals only with foreign affairs—you know, the other 95 percent of humanity."
In a daring move, Zakaria has chosen to have mostly non-Americans as guests, a technique that often yields surprising insights. He's discussed the Iraq situation with the country's deputy prime minister, talked to a Yemeni editor about the connections between Yemen and Al Qaeda, and gabbed about Islam's treatment of women with Muslim feminists. Perhaps in another era this wouldn't have seemed like such a bold move, but as one nation under Bush, we've grown increasingly proud of our insularity. Zakaria sees the media's reaction to the London bombings as an example of American self-centeredness: "Ten minutes after the British have gone through this terrible tragedy, we were already saying, 'How safe are our subways? Sure, London has just suffered this terrible catastrophic loss—but enough about you, what about us!' " he says, smiling. "I think this attitude does translate into the way we interact with the world as a government and as a people." He envisions Foreign Exchange as a half-hour corrective: "If you want to understand what's going on in the rest of the world, listen to what foreigners are saying about it."
Although he exudes ambition—simultaneously editing a magazine, writing a weekly column, hosting a TV show, and writing a book—Zakaria refuses to infect his show with glitziness. Movie star Natalie Portman recently appeared on Foreign Exchange to riff on her pet cause, microfinancing in the third world. Most hosts would've been thrilled to nab an actor with crossover potential, but Zakaria agreed only on the condition that if she gave a vacuous interview, he could kill it. "It turned out she really knew her stuff, and it's an important issue that's not at all sexy. But I was still ambivalent, because I feel there's a reason to be a PBS show, and I don't want to lose that." Chances are mainstream news outlets will continue to court him, but Zakaria claims he doesn't want to be the new Peter Jennings. "I love the opportunity to amplify my voice through television, and I love the idea of making more Americans aware of what goes on in the world. But being a TV star, you're chained to the camera; you can never really travel. And I don't know how you can understand the world that way." He's been to Iraq, China, and Germany in the last few months alone—he'd travel even more, he says, if he didn't have two small children and a wife in New York.
...

He hopes Foreign Exchange can remain nonpartisan, unruffled by PBS's recent obsession with ideological balance. "Conservatives are now all of a sudden asking for affirmative action!" he quips, before bemoaning the way the media treat American politics as a partisan spectator sport. "The reality is that the American public isn't that polarized. I bet you a lot of conservatives watch Jon Stewart, and a lot of liberals watch O'Reilly, because they make news fun."
Bizarrely, Zakaria cites The Daily Show as an inspiration for his own earnest series, because "it gets to the core of news items in a funny, quick way. Obviously I have to do it differently since I'm not doing a comedy show—and, as Jon Stewart likes to say, I'm not preceded by talking puppets. But who knows, in some PBS markets Sesame Street might be on before me."

The bit about him and Portman is great. Zakaria has become incredibly unique. He enjoys a cult following through his frequent appearences on The Daily Show. He is an extremely charismatic and telegenic guy yet he chooses to dedicate the bulk of his attention to his smaller media opportunities, where the money and fame isn't. I don't think this is a bad decision, but instead one that makes his intentions crystal clear: he wants nothing but to increase the level of discourse in this country and to do so on his terms. Zakaria is another guy (like John Tierney) who deserves attention for his contributions to the country.

-Mr. Alec

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Noah Feldman on Iraq's Constitution.

The status of the Iraqi constitution is one that I have left alone for quite some time. This was mostly due to lack of interesting coverage (outside of the front-page material) and a general lack of understanding (that I believe was shared by most) about what was really going on.

Well finally I (and hopefully you the reader) have some help. First, the draft constitution has been translated into English on the BBC website. I did not read it all, but the first half was rather interesting. Second, Noah Feldman, one of my favorite academics wrote an op-ed in the New York Times today on Iraq's constitution, something he has a unique knowledge of. In 2003 Feldman, who is fluent in Arabic and a constitutional law professor, went to Iraq as the Senior Advisor on constitutional law to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Feldman shares some intriguing and often humorous anecdotes of his work for the CPA in his book What We Owe Iraq, which is sort of a half-travelogue half-ethical analysis of nation building.

Regardless of his qualifications Feldman had some interesting observations today about a constitutional process that has left many befuddled. He is able to provide a rather blunt opinion while simultaneously providing much of the uncovered back story to the constitutional negotiations.

This is definitely something you should read all of, but I'll provide you with the juiciest taste:

It had taken two years for most Shiite Iraqis to begin to embrace the idea of federalism, and it was never realistic to expect Sunnis to undergo the same process of resigned acceptance in a matter of weeks.

Yet just as the train of Sunni rejectionism was gathering momentum, American insistence on meeting an arbitrary deadline was hurtling in the other direction. President Bush's personal intervention - he called Mr. Hakim late last week to ask for Shiite concessions and more talk - was a case of too little too late, and in any event conflicted with the message of time pressure that the Americans had been pushing for months. And when the Shiites and Kurds chose to send the constitution to the public without reaching an agreement with their Sunni partners, the latter had little choice but to publicly condemn the process and the draft.

In the end, placing Sunnis on the constitution committee despite the electoral results in January, then pressuring them to do a deal, was an approach that backfired: ignoring them when their views could not be reconciled sent a strong message to average Sunnis that politics is useless if you are in the minority.

Although things look bad today, the game is not yet quite over. Should the constitution be rejected on Oct. 15, everyone can head back to the negotiation table and try again. In fact, the worst outcome might be a passage of the draft despite widespread rejection by Sunni voters. While it is apparently too late to change the text, Shiites and Kurds can still reach out to Sunni voters and try to convince them that they would flourish under the constitution. This would require a few public concessions, including commitments not to form a southern mega-region that leaves the impoverished Sunnis trapped between de facto Shiite and Kurdish states.

A constitution is just a piece of paper, no better than the underlying consensus - or lack thereof - that it memorializes. If Iraq adopts a constitution that reflects a profound and unresolved national split, violence and eventual division of the nation will follow. Ordinary Iraqis and American soldiers will be the losers. So will the ideal of constitutional government.

The most interesting point Feldman makes is about the possible rejection of the draft constitution. He is probably correct, nothing would more properly engage Iraqi's about the state of their nation than a narrow rejection of the charter. Also this would prove to the Sunni's that they have some recourse other than violence. This of course is probably a pipe-dream. First, the United States would never allow it to happen (how bizarre is it that the Iraqi vote on their constitution may end up being more important than Bush's midterm elections). Second, it would be an uphill battle for Sunni's to gain support, especially if many decide, like last the time, to not even vote.

But hopefully this ratification process can encourage the Sunni's to motivate their voting base and show the Shiites and Kurds, politically, that compromises are required to hold this country together.

-Mr. Alec

PS Also check out Noah Feldman's book on Islamic democracy, After Jihad

State of the Blog

So I have been blogging for almost 7 months now. I would be lying if I claimed that I was thoroughly content with every aspect of this blog, but I do think I have made major headway in some departments.

First I think we should review the purpose I set out for this blog and compare that with what I have done. I entered the blogosphere mostly as a reaction to a miserable blog that I came into contact with. I started by just mercilessly posting comments in response to inane posts but after awhile I felt rather hypocritical. It is very easy to prove someone wrong but difficult to actually contribute something. With that in mind I set out establishing this blog.

I believe that my Mission Statement still rings true:

Primarily I want to comment of political issues of interest and to establish common grounding. Let’s hope this blog ends up being constructive, I will stray as far away as possible from a The Democrat Eat Babies or Bush is the next Hitler blog. So let’s hope this delicate balance produces effectiveness, not crap. Last I will attempt to be as original as possible with my posts. I will shy away from just paraphrasing an article, if I find an article of particular interest, I will just post that. But with that said, no ideas are created in a vacuum, so feel free to call me out on copying, but do not expect me to always care.

But I think I have areas that I need to improve. I need to blog more frequently and with more regularity. Too often I will have periods where I write 5 posts in 3 days and then go a week without writing another thing. I would say that my biggest regret was not posting a single thing in all of June. But I think I have rebounded nicely, in a couple of weeks I will be back at school and perhaps that return of structure in my life will regularize posting, but I would not bet on it. The best I can do is keep trying to read mass media and books and then post the interesting stuff I find.

Some have recommended making my blog more regular, like once a week. But my problem with that is news does not happen once a week. Ideas do not come to me on a once a week basis. If anything I should be writing about 1-2 posts a day given the number of ideas that come to my head but the best I can promise is that I will try harder to write 2 to 3 times a week (and the easy way to keep track is to subscribe to the XML feed with an RSS reader, they are in Firefox, Thunderbird). I think that would be an optimal rate.

Another big move on this blog has been the addition of Kevin Tierney to the writering staff. I think that eventually I will want this to be a multiauthor blog so expect for the number of authors to slowly increase with time. The draw of a multiauthor blog for me is that it provides a diverse range of opinions on similar issues. Also it makes the website more interesting because there is likely to always be a new discussion occurring. This is the direction this blog is probably headed, so watch out.

Now that we have gotten to the future, here is what else to expect. For one, expect a new name for this blog. I have gone through about a dozen and have yet to find one that could accurately yet playfully summarize my goals here (lately I have been thinking about something that would play on radical centrism, but I'm lost). The blog will continue to be named Mr. Alec until I come up with a better and more permanent name.

I think once the name has been established I will migrate the blog out of blogger. The setup sucks and I am stuck with this funky layout (trust me it is the best of the options, it was this or Hello Kitty!).

So hopefully that is an exciting future. We'll see where it takes us.

-Mr. Alec

Religion, political correctness, and academic freedom

Interestingly enough one of the initial motivations of the secular movement in the United States was to disengage religion from its oppression of science and reason. Noah Feldman explains:

Two books written in the 1870s and widely read for decades laid the scientific groundwork for American strong secularism as not just an intellectual position but an ideology: Andrew Dickson White's work, The Warfare of Science (1876), which grew out of a lecture first delivered at the Cooper Institute in New York in 1874; and The History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, by New York University chemist-turned-historian John William Draper published in 1876. Although neither of these books used the word "secularism," both were serious, systematic efforts by members in good standing of the educational elite to promote reason to the detriment of doctrinal religious faith.

Feldman continues, explaining how White teamed up with Ezra Cornell to found Cornell University, the countries first nonsectarian university. This prompted attacks from many in the religious establishment. An exasperated White went on the offensive, defending his approach in a lecture:

In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and to science; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good to both of religion and science.

Draper took a more decisive view, arguing that religion:

...insisted on divine revelation that "must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction," while [science] represented the "irresistible advance of human knowledge." In this conflict between static religion and dynamic science, Draper wished to take sides. "History shows that, if this be not done, social misfortunes, disastrous and enduring, will ensure." If religion were to win its latest battle against science, Draper argued, a new Dark Age would be sure to follow.

The villain of Draper's piece was the Catholic church...[his] chapters were organized around specific conflicts between the church and science, to devastating effect. The church was shown upholding the flat Earth and the geocentric universe against Copernicus, Galileo, and the circumnavigation of the globe.

Draper and White were two huge forces in the reinvention of American centers of higher learning. Prior, the nation's universities were blatantly religious and the students were taught accordingly. The passion of many academics was exacerbated by the intellectual strides in Germany's largely secular universities in the mid to late nineteenth century. Eventually the academics won out in the battle for America's universities. This prompted the last great wave of university foundings, many of which were based upon the German model (examples include top schools like Washington University in St. Louis, MIT, Cal Tech, Vanderbilt, John Hopkins, USC, Stanford, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Rice, and Carnegie Mellon). Along with this new wave of universities (and greatly reformed old ones like the Ivies) came the modern concept of a professor.

The full-time, tenured professor was based upon the German system. The New York Times describes the German model that American academic tenure is based upon: "(the) American academy eventually adopted the German university model, with its research-oriented faculty of experts and the protection of lehrfreiheit, or 'freedom to teach,' without political restraints." At that time the only real political threat to scientific inquiry was the Church.

Over the past century religion has lost its cultural stanglehold. But as the church's prominence fell the scientific community's dream of a world without political constraints did not come true. Instead many proponents of secularism attempted to restrain inquiry into subjects they felt taboo, this movement has become popularly known as political correctness.

Now I am not decrying the entirety of political correctness. Much of the movement has been beneficial to our society, simply encouraging the people to do unto others as you would do have them do unto you. It has made the workplace more comfortable to our increasingly diverse society. But in doing so the movement has adopted certain philosophies that have become just as restrictive to free inquiry as the Church once was.

These philosophies essentially place certain areas completely off limits. In some instances people or events are the untouchable subjects. Other times it is in relation to full philosophical beliefs, most prominent of which is that all people are born equal in ability; that any women is as capable as man, that any race is as capable as any other. Although this is a philosophy that I am particularly sympathetic towards, being wedded to it does nothing but limit the scope of questions science can accurately assess.

When Professor/Blogger Eugene Volokh began discussing sexual orientation because of a recent study with interesting results he said a couple of things people did not like to hear, sparking some controversy. His controversial statements were:

Now, as I've suggested, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about such attempt to convert people away from purely heterosexual behavior, if they are interested in homosexual behavior, and of course if the "conversion" is done without force, imposition on those who are genuinely too young to decide, and so on. If it weren't for the disproportionate and grave health danger from male homosexual activity, I'd think such encouragement to explore which relationships give people the most happiness would be positively quite good. (Yes, I realize that the danger can be reduced by not engaging in anal sex, always using a condom, not having sex with a partner unless he's been tested and had not had sex for some months before the test, and so on. But most people are not nearly this cautious, and the reality thus remains that, given the vastly disproportionate prevalence of HIV among gays in America today, the greater risk from anal sex, a practice that for understandable reasons many male homosexuals do not want to forego, and the notorious difficulty with getting people to actually practice safe practices — whether aimed at preventing disease or conception — the fact remains that experimenting with male homosexuality is dangerous activity.) Given this danger, I'd prefer that men with bisexual orientations who can be happy with women not experiment with men; but that's a judgment about medical risk, not about the inherent morality of "conversion" attempts, and in any event it doesn't apply to lesbianism.

Nonetheless, if I'm right, then I don't think we should deny that the gay and lesbian movement does aim in part at "converting" people who have a wholly or partly bisexual orientation from a purely heterosexual behavior pattern to one that involves at least some (initially experimental) homosexual behavior.

In response Volokh provided a synopsis of emails he received an excellent defense of his statements:

Sssh! We're Not Supposed To Be Talking About the relative risk of male homosexual sexual conduct: So some commenters to this post seem to think. To recap: My earlier post noted in passing that male homosexual sex is much more dangerous for the men than is heterosexual sex. To my surprise, three people e-mailed me with fairly detailed messages that either denied or minimized these risks. I decided to respond, because this is actually an important point, on which people need to know the facts.
1. But wait! A couple of the commenters decided that this must show some "ulterior motives" and some presumably sinister "agenda," because of course my statement was "so obvious" that there was no legitimate reason for mentioning it. I get three e-mails (which I noted in my original post) denying the accuracy of my claim. None seem to be from cranks — one is from a Ph.D. who's also a founding father of the gay rights movement, and the two others are from people who seem to be quite articulate, thoughtful, and generally well-informed. You'd think there'd be two pretty obvious motives for my responding: (A) I want to rebut what seem to be important and dangerous misconceptions. (B) I want to respond to people's criticism of my assertion. Apparently not.

OK, though, I confess: I am developing an ulterior motive in writing about this stuff. The more people tell me not to write about things that strike me as important and perfectly legitimate to write about, the more I'm tempted to write about them. If people are trying to cow others into not discussing this information, then it's all the more important that we remain uncowed.

2. Several commenters also argued that posting this information was somehow improper because it might be misused (for instance, because it would "play right into the hands of the anti-gay right").

Well, I'm an academic, and my sense of the academic ethos — or at least the best of that ethos — is that we try to publish the facts, even when the facts may be used by bad people in bad arguments as well as by good people in good arguments. (Yes, there are obvious exceptions, perhaps such as publishing information about how anyone can brew up smallpox in his kitchen; but the very extremeness of this example should remind us how narrow these exceptions are.)

Lots of information related to race, sex, sexual orientation, and more can be and has been misused by bad people. Yet reasoned inquiry and debate can't proceed without it. You can't think seriously about criminal justice and crime control without recognizing the racial disparities in crime. You can't think seriously about the causes of disproportionate representation of men and women in certain fields without at least considering whether men and women might on average have important biological differences that might explain some of this disproportion. You can't think seriously about what public health strategies are needed to fight AIDS, about whether various existing strategies are being conducted usefully and honestly, about whether it's proper for sperm banks or blood banks to screen out gay donors, about why AIDS infection patterns are so different in Africa and in the U.S. — or for that matter, about how careful one should be in one's own sex life, or whether (if one is a bisexual) one should experiment with homosexual sexual behavior — without knowing the data about the demographics of HIV.

If people misuse the data I posted, I'm sorry, in the sense that I wish they didn't do that. But I'm not the least bit sorry I posted it. These are tremendously important facts; literally life-or-death facts for some. I'm going to keep posting information like this, because I believe that keeping quiet about it does far more harm than good. And the more I see people trying to stop others from distributing this information, the more important it seems to me that it be distributed.

In a similar but much more prominent example Harvard President Larry Summers' comments at a NBER conference on Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce set off a maelstrom. I could quote in length what Summers said (you can read the comments yourself here), but the jist is that maybe, on average, women are not as disposed to science as men. The resulting uproar seemed rather superficial especially because Summers comments had been speculative and off the record. But Summers detractors saw his statements as oppressive because they were from a man of power who seemed to be encouraging the gap between men and women in science. This of course is bullshit given that his comments were never to be published.

Summers' actual sin was that he had challenged the tacitly accepted notion that men are equal to women. The controversy that stayed in the news for weeks was purely because a man of national prominence had challenged something that you are not suppose to challenge (I was going to go into an explanation about why the above comments are separated from the pointlessly bombastic ones of University of Colorado Ward Churchill whose essay "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" advanced the same thesis of Fareed Zakaria's "The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?" but was wrought with needless insensitive and offensive language).

The harm of all of these controversies is that it creates an atmosphere intolerant to discussing certain issues (which ironically tend to be the most significant, like urban decay or ways to improve African-American's quality of life). We end up with a society where pundits skip to the end of a study and decry the concluding statements, regardless of the rigor used to come to that conclusion. In turn academics are either encouraged to soften their conclusions or discouraged from studying certain areas at all. Both are unacceptable if we wish to maintain the preeminent position the United States enjoys in free academic discourse.

Hopefully this illustrates the vital importance of tenure; the primary means of protecting the academic ethos. But tenure is not a cureall. The status quo simply causes many professors to camp out in their Ivory Tower. Professors may have tenure from losing their professorship but they don't enjoy the same protection from jobs in public service. Many must make the choice between a life in academia and a life in public service, not both. This is unfortunate because much of the countries brightest talent in academia. Economists typically are the best educated to make informed decisions on the economy, but often the study of economics causes conclusions that are not politically correct. Often law professors are the foremost scholarly talent on issues of jurisprudence, yet to get confirmed a nominee must be a sleeper, with no long record of blunt statements on where they lie on issues of great strife.

Surely it has never been more apparent how long ago the election of ex-Princeton President and Professor Woodrow Wilson was. That was a different era and certainly not one that I am demanding to return. But as a society we ought to relax on issues of political correctness, we ought to encourage discussion of controversial issues; we ought to export the academic ethos to all of society. Contrarians that challenge what is considered holy often yield the most significant ideas and discoveries (think about greats ranging from Charles Darwin to Milton Friedman). More than one hundred years ago universities found a way to protect science from the church, today we need to think about protecting aptitude and discourse from society itself.

-Mr. Alec

Monday, August 29, 2005

Robertson vs. Chavez

I am about 3/4 done on a very long post about academic freedom, religion, and political correctness. Expect that either tonight or tommorow. In the mean time the Economist had a very funny article about Pat Robertson. Enjoy:

WHAT Pat Robertson prays for can come to pass. He prayed for a vacancy on the Supreme Court and—lo!—Sandra Day O'Connor retired. But the decreasingly popular televangelist seems to notch up more misses than hits. His fulminations against oral sex do not seem to have nipped the practice in the bud (or so we are told). And his warning that “earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor” would strike Disney World for hosting a “Gay Day” came, alas, to nought.

So Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's populist president, can probably sleep easy, despite Mr Robertson's suggestion this week that he be assassinated for defying America. “We have the ability to take him out,” he told his tele-flock on August 22nd, “And I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator.”

Mr Robertson's relations with strong-arm dictators have not always been so unfriendly. He was rather chummy with Mobutu Sese Seko, the pink-champagne-gargling robber-despot of Zaire. And the erstwhile Republican presidential candidate gnashed his teeth when America helped depose Charles Taylor, the tyrant of Liberia, whose men carried out abortions with machetes, killing the mother as well, for fun.

Mr Chávez affected to be unruffled: “I don't know who this person is...what he opines makes no odds to me.” But he must be delighted. Mr Robertson has put him where he loves to be: at the centre of media attention and of the rhetorical hostility of “American imperialism”. The Bush administration, however, was swift to disavow the rant and Mr Robertson eventually apologised. Mr Chávez's officials said it exposed the hypocrisy of America's “war on terror”.

Mr Chávez has claimed in the past that George Bush plans either to assassinate him or to invade Venezuela to quash his “Bolivarian revolution”. He has used this as a pretext for forming an armed militia, which in practice is likely to be used to crush his opponents at home. Mr Robertson's outburst comes as American officials are trying to tone down a war of words with Mr Chávez, which many recognise has achieved little but the alienation of other, better governments in Latin America.

Cheers,

Mr. Alec

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Krugman shows up his truth squad

The National Review had an article yesterday entitled "Krugman Truth Squad" by Donald Luskin. Essentially Donald went about showing that Paul Krugman had made a few incorrect assertions in his latest op-ed. Luskin explains:

America’s most dangerous liberal pundit had written,
Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

By the end of the day, Krugman’s lie had been blasted out of the water by a flotilla of Krugman Truth Squad members in the blogosphere, including Chief Brief, Power Line, Brainster, The American Thinker, Brain Terminal, and my own blog, The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor & Stupid.
Krugman’s lie was especially loathsome considering that his own newspaper — the New York Times — was a member of one of the media consortiums to review the election results. On November 12, 2001, the Times reported:

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations … The media consortium included The Times ...

Of course, Krugman would never publish a formal retraction. As former Times “public editor” Dan Okrent said of Krugman, “I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism.” And besides, that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election is the creation-myth of the Angry Left — it is an article of religious faith not to be questioned. And so we find Krugman, in his column Monday, digging himself even deeper into a pit of deceit as he attempts to paper over his lie.

Responding to what he called the “outraged reaction” to his Friday column, Krugman starts by rephrasing his lie in less ambitious terms:

what would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn’t intervened; the answer is that unless the judge overseeing the recount had revised his order (which is a possibility), George W. Bush would still have been declared the winner. … what would have happened if there had been a full, statewide manual recount — as there should have been. The probable answer is that Al Gore would have won, by a tiny margin.

Now, Krugman acknowledges that Bush would have won if the recount that had actually been ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had been allowed to proceed. Now, Krugman makes it clear that what he was talking about on Friday was something more than that — a “full” recount beyond the scope of the one contemplated at the time, something that was not on the table, yet he personally believes “should have been.” Now, Krugman discloses that even this would have made a Gore victory only a “probable answer,” and even then only “by a tiny margin.”

Luskin finishes with a bold question and a speculative answer:

Those are the facts. But will the Times run a correction, at least concerning Krugman’s blatant factual misrepresentations about the Miami Herald/USA Today consortium’s results? As of this writing, I’ve heard nothing in response to my query about it to “public editor” Byron Calame. I’m not holding my breath. There’s no way the New York Times is going to interrupt its most effective evangelist when he’s in the middle of a fire-and-brimstone sermon about the Angry Left’s cherished creation-myth.

Sadly for Mr. Luskin, Krugman has come out in his op-ed today (which, by the way, is a perfect example of why I can't read his stuff anymore, he has let his politics overwhelm his writing style and economic observations) and corrected his mistatements:

Corrections: In my column last Friday, I cited an inaccurate number (given by the Conyers report) for turnout in Ohio's Miami County last year: 98.5 percent. I should have checked the official state site, which reports a reasonable 72.2 percent. Also, the public editor says, rightly, that I should acknowledge initially misstating the results of the 2000 Florida election study by a media consortium led by The Miami Herald. Unlike a more definitive study by a larger consortium that included The New York Times, an analysis that showed Al Gore winning all statewide manual recounts, the earlier study showed him winning two out of three.

So where does this all leave us, well Luskin and the National Review come off looking incredibly petty while Krugman comes off as the mature one. Luskin could have decided to actually respond to Krugman's arguements but decided to attack his character. But the stupid thing was that Luskin's character attack was based upon the assumption that Krugman would never apologize. Woops.

-Mr. Alec

Does the Kerry or Gore Democrat exist?

Joseph Britt, who guest-blogged for Daniel Drezner last week signed off with a really thought provoking column on the Democratic party:

I want to close with a question that has been percolating between my ears for a while now. People who followed politics in 30 and 40 years ago could have identified such a thing as a "Humphrey Democrat," a "Jackson Democrat," even a "McGovern Democrat." None of these men ever got elected President -- only Humphrey came close -- but all of them had substantial accomplishments in their political careers, accomplishments that could not have been theirs if positioning themselves for a run at the White House had absorbed their whole attention.
What is a Kerry Democrat? For that matter, what is a Gore Democrat, or an Edwards Democrat? Immediate family members of the gentlemen in question surely count, as must a number of their paid staff and -- technically -- Democrats who by coincidence share the last name of Kerry, Gore or Edwards. But that's about it.
There may not be any political implications flowing from this. It may just be that Presidential politics has changed; the people who get nominated for President now are those who establish a foothold through their relation to someone else, their election to a safe seat in the Senate, or their campaigning skills, and then wait around for their moment to strike. It just occurs to me when reading thought pieces about what position Democrats should take on Iraq, or health care, or taxes that parties don't adopt positions on important issues until people do. Whether ideas go anywhere depends on whether their advocates are smart and capable, not on whether their party's strategic direction is right where it should be. There is no shortage of chiefs in the Democratic Party, or Indians either. I just don't see any leaders.

I think that this is a really interesting position on a topic I have discussed before. In May I said:

I am truly starting to think that George Bush is a lot more than just a tiny cap on a pyramid. He is an extraordinary political figure who has been able to seem like a common man while having a WASP upbringing and the business connections necessary to win the business section of the Republican Party. Simultaneously, as a born-again Christian he is able to win over and more importunately, mobilize the social conservatives in a way that Reagan could not even do. For all that Democrats deride him for his seeming lack of intelligence and charisma; he is a man who has been able to unite the very distinct elements of the Republican Party.

Now according to Bradley's thesis, this should be an easy job, one that anyone could do. But I highly doubt that and I think we will see why in 3 years. Mostly because of the way that Bill Frist has manufactured a lot of his socially conservative views and how easily it will be for Democrats to crucify him on his litany of terrible choices (worst of all, according to The Economist, in his 1989 book Transplant, “He even recommended changing the legal definition of “brain death” to make it easier to harvest the organs of anencephalic babies (who are born with a fatal neurological disorder but show signs of mental activity).” Can someone say hypocrite). Because there does not seem to be anyone (as I know of yet) who has the transcendent charisma that Bush has, certainly Bill Frist does not have it, someone who rivals Al Gore in his ability to connect with the people.

In fact the Al Gore analogy with Bill Frist is a particularly fruitful one, I think I will hit more on that in a later post. But regardless of that point, I think that Bradley is giving the Republicans far too much credit for their success when he paints it as this well oiled machine, when in fact, much of the Republican success has been built around personalities who have had a much broader appeal then their individual ideologies. The list includes those like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and of course Dubya. Also, this would explain why Reagan and Dubya have had such success while Bush Sr. floundered despite almost everything going for him.

I think that this is still true today. But Mr. Britt alludes to a point that I did not stress enough. George Bush and Reagan were more than great personalities. They were dynamic men whose personalities could capture the spirit of their ideas and policies.

Clinton had the personality and charisma that could have given birth to the Clinton Democrat. The Democrats could have achieved what the Labour Party in Britain has: dominionation over both its constituency and its opposition through third-way politics (Radical Centrism!). But any such movement was lost because of Clinton's extracurricular activities and the subsequent nomination of lamewad Al Gore (this may explain the nomination of Dick Cheney in 2004, it gives the Republican party flexibility in their candidate for 2008, something Democrats never had in 2000).

With that done, Republicans ascended to power and have been able to repeatedly target old mainstays of the Democratic party, forcing Democrats to do nothing but defend their old and often flawed ideas. Meanwhile the Democratic party is looking so fractured that any new idea is bound to offend one of the tenuously held constituencies. But unfortunately the fractures are such that the party is still capable of garnering 48% of the countries vote with stiffwad John Kerry. This has caused a chilling effect, where open debate has been stifled out of fear of alienating any one constituency. Simultaneously silence is encouraged by the hope of being able to randomly get that extra 1-2% next year needed to take the White House.

But Democrats should not fear. All it really takes is one candidate or event to unite a party. Republicans have got where they are because of pregnant chads and 9/11. We'll see how it all plays out, but if someone as crazy as Howard Dean can gain the following he has, then it may take as little as a Hillary Clinton to reinvent the Democrats in 2008.

And hell, if that does not work out, Democrats always have superstar in training Barack Obama.

-Mr. Alec

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Connecticut and No Child Left Behind

One of the big news items earlier this week revolved around Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's announcement that the state of Connecticut was suing the federal government because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was an un(der)funded state mandate (full disclosure: Blumenthal is a politcian that I like and would vote for, for governor if he decides to run).

Now I have no doubt that this lawsuit will go nowhere. But winning is not Blumenthal's reasoning for going through with his threat. Instead Blumenthal gets to reopen the debate on NCLB, while also getting some free national publicity.

So because it is up for debate, why don't we do just that.

I for one, do not see what the big deal about NCLB is. It seems like a pretty agreeable piece of legislation. Federal government forces testing and transparency in return for money. Hell, Ted Kennedy wrote the damn bill. But seriously, everything we know about competition in other sectors informs us that market approaches work. In fact, experience from individual state programs shows that testing has worked. Late last month the National Asessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has periodically tested a representative sample of 9, 13, and 17 years olds since the early 1970s, had some welcome news (as reported by The Economist):

This year's report contained two striking results. The first is that America's
nine-year-olds posted their best scores in reading and maths since the tests
were introduced (in 1971 in reading and 1973 in maths). The second is that the
gap between white students and minorities is narrowing. The nine-year-olds who
made the biggest gains of all were blacks, traditionally the most educationally
deprived group in American society.

No one can argue about good news like that, until it comes to taking credit for that good news. The Bush administration was quick to attribute NCLB for the gain in testing, a dubious assertion given that it has been in effect for all of one year. But I do think this bodes well for the success of NCLB because NCLB is merely a federal program based upon similar state programs. Programs that I believe deserve credit for the boost in the NEAP's scoring. The other awesome thing about the NEAP's results is that minorities are closing the gap. This flies in the face of what many anti-testing advocates have told us about the biases of standardized tests, The Economist paraphrases the arguments:

Peter Sacks, author of a 2000 book on the subject, called them (standardized
tests) “abusive”, “meaningless” and “what amounts to the academic lynching of
children of colour”. Others think the tests say black 17-year-olds can read no
better than white 13-year-olds because that, alas, is the case.

The Economist continues:

Test scores are excellent predictors of success in later life. Black men, on
average, earn less than white men, a disparity often blamed on discrimination in
the job market. But a study by George Farkas and Keven Vicknair found that if
one compares black men with whites with similar scores on standardised tests,
the blacks earned slightly more. Another study found that the gap was merely
reduced by three-quarters. Either way, it would appear that literacy and
numeracy are rather important if you want to get on in life. Why this should
shock anyone is baffling.

I can not stress how great this is if it is true. What it means is that there is finally a way for the horrendous school systems that many poor urban areas have, to quantify their mediocrity. Finally, Connecticut will have to publish Greenwich's numbers next to New Haven and Hartford's. Providing incentives for states to have all their school districts performing at a high level seems like a great thing, that can do wonders for the state of public education in much of the country.

So then the question turns to, just why is Blumenthal making such a big stink about this all. Well Blumenthal does have a point or two. Connecticut has been testing for over a decade. Blumenthal claims this has been done to great success, yet NCLB requires his state to test children more (Connecticut now tests every other year, NCLB requires more frequent testing) and that this would come at a great cost. This is really three points in one.

First, Blumenthal is raising the issue of cost. Namely that more frequent testing will cost the state a couple million over a couple of years and that this sucks. Second, the added cost of testing ought to be paid for by the federal government, not the states. And third, and this is the veiled argument, that more frequent testing, or even testing of any kind, will not achieve anything (I think this is given purely for the teacher's unions support).

So lets have it. On the first and second argument I think that the price tag is not that onerous. The federal government frequently losses and gains more money that it projects. I refuse to believe that Connecticut does not have the couple million necessary to get the ball rolling. Especially when doing so can reap such rich rewards.

But it is pretty clear that money is not the reason this is such big news. States squabble about money all the time and it does not cause front page news or lead editorials. Also, the National Education Association (or NEAMBLA as Jon Stewart would say) has not lobbied every state to do as Connecticut did because it is an underfunded mandate. The main areas of contention are accountability and how accountability is measured.

The NEA and other teacher's unions have a long history of avoiding accountability. They have lynched Arnold Schwarzeneger over his attempts to make firing bad teachers easier. They are opposed to paying teachers different salaries based on their field of teaching. This of course means that gym teachers get paid the same as a physics teacher. All of these are just ridiculous, and ultimately harmful to the American public school system. They are shameful attempts to protect and inflate salaries of cushy school jobs.

But the other area of contention surrounds how accountability is measured. The frequent argument used against testing is that testing causes schools to only teach to the test. H. Kaye Griffin, president of Connecticut's statewide superintendent organization voiced this opinion:

Griffin...warned that there are serious problems with the No Child Left Behind program beyond funding.

Griffin said that it would "be impossible not to spend an inordinate amount
of time" preparing Connecticut schoolchildren for the new and extensive rounds
of testing being mandated by the federal law — time that should be used for more
than simply how to pass a specific test.

And this is true, but if the test is curriculum based, why is this bad? If the tests require teachers to teach math effectively, how can you go wrong? Isn't that what any ordinary quiz or test does? Tests the material taught. Furthermore, how can schools decry testing when they are simultaneously ramping up the number of AP classes; classes that exist only to teach to one test. Sure the statewide tests can be imperfect. But then the debate should be about what an effective test is and how it should be properly implemented, not whether we should test at all.

Honestly I believe that a lot of Democrats do not like NCLB because it was passed by President Bush and it carries a cocky PATRIOT Act like name that symbolizes so much of what Democrats despise in President Bush. But if you look past the name and see what it intends to accomplish on a nationwide scale, no lack of federal funding ought to inhibit NCLB's implementation.

-Mr. Alec

GoogleTalk

In case you have not heard, Google is amazing.

http://talk.google.com/

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Cheers,

Mr. Alec

Telling people what they don't want to hear

I have to say that one of the attributes I respect most in the politicians that I like, is an ability to tell constituents what they do not want to hear.

This summer I am working for my district's congresswoman, a liberal democrat. I think she is a good congresswoman. She definitely has myvote come next year. But she is anti-free trade. Quite simply, she has voted against NAFTA and CAFTA. Now I know she is a smart lady and I am sure she knows that there exists an overwhelming amount of evidence that shows how amazing free-trade can be. But she voted against it anyway.

When I have complained about this to friends and family, they have excused it as her merely representing her constituency; and they are right, that is all she is doing. There are many farmers and union laborers in her district who view free trade as a threat to their jobs and way of life. But as a whole, Connecticut and even the 3rd Congressional District would be better off with a passed NAFTA and CAFTA.

Anyways, this made me think of my favorite politician: Robert Kennedy. I think one of the things that I admire most about his legacy was his willingness to engage voters that he disagreed with. During his ill-fated 1968 Presidential Campaign RFK went to dozens of college campuses and essentially told radical students two things: I am against the Vietnam war and I am even more against draft deferrals for wealthy children. Now the second point did not yield any cheers, in fact it lead to booing on a number of occasions, he was right and voters came to respect him for that.

Taking an unpopular stand on a controversial issue is always risky. It requires a politician to have a charisma and sincerity that very few have. Furthermore, bold decisions rarely achieve popularity in their time. Abraham Lincoln tirelessly fought an unpopular war to retain the Union, Woodrow Wilson's push for worldwide democracy fell on deaf ears, and Harry Truman's honest and no nonsense stand on issues ranging from military desegregation and the Korean War only lead to one of the great re-election campaigns of all time. However time has worn well on all of these once unpopular decisions. Today members on both sides of the aisle are never afraid to quote any of those presidents.

Of course, even Lincoln practiced politics, slowly developing the rationale of the war as it progressed. So in no way do I expect every politician to risk everything for something as geeky as free-trade. Free trade is very different than war or significant social issues. It requires one to essentially tell the soon to be unemployed that their struggle is worth it for the rest of the state or district. But protectionist policies are undeniably destructive. They limit the creation of future, higher paying jobs. Also, they cause prices of goods to remain high. Protecting agriculture holds up the prices of all the vegetables and fruits we eat. Saving a couple hundred dollars a year on food can be huge for someone just barely scraping by, but politically it is a lot easier to pander to those with the most at stake.

I guess my point is that my congresswoman has every right to vote the way she does but she should not be excused from the decisions she makes merely because she does not have the balls to tell her constituents what is correct and true.

Hoping to keep my job,

Mr. Alec

Mr. Alec