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For The 99% -- An Action Proposal

2011-12-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

So far the Occupy movement has wisely chosen to simply express its dissatisfaction with the present system, without prematurely rushing into any concrete action. Here's a proposal for several individual or small-group actions which might be first steps toward changing the system.

Picketing:
1) Identify any corporate offices in your community where CEOs who are paid more than a million dollars have their offices. Picket entrances where these officers (and others) enter and exit. Picket especially during hours when CEOs and others are entering and leaving -- say 7 to 9 in the morning, 11-2 midday, and 4-7 in the evening. Do not interrupt, do not block traffic, do not confront, but do carry signs. Remember to notify the press.
2) Don't bother lower-level (retail) stores and offices. These are of course staffed by fellow 99%ers.

Legislative:
1) Either individually or as a member of a small local group (neighbors, co-workers, whatever), announce that you will support only candidates (for local, state, or national office) who promise to support legislation to tax the wealthy. Tell the press.
2) Propose to any club or organization you belong to that they adopt a similar policy.
3) Consider opposing candidates who are themselves multi-millionaires.

Corporate:
1) Identify corporations that pay executives more than a million dollars a year.
2) Buy one or two shares of one or more of these.
3) Attend annual stockholder meetings of these corporations.
4) Introduce a motion to limit total compensation (salary, deferred compensation, stock options, other percs, etc.) to $1-million per year. Tell the press your plans in advance.
5) If you are employed, you may be contributing to a pension plan. Check with your pernsion plan to determine where it invests its money (your money!). If -- as is likely -- it invests in stock of large corporations, encourage your fellow employees to urge the pension fund to vote its shares to limit executive compensation (as in 4 above).
6) If your alma mater has an endowment fund -- as it surely does -- find where the money is invested. Encourage your school to vote its shares to pressure the corporations it invests in to adopt a policy of limiting executive compensation.
7) Look around for other organizations which invest their cash reserves in stock of corporations. Urge them to take similar action.
8) Urge that corporations restructure their cash-flow: after allowing for reasonable reserves (to cover growth, market downturns, etc.) and fair dividends to investors, additional cash should be distributed in a balance of the following ways: a) reduced retail prices for the company's products, b) increased wages for the lowest-paid employees, and 3) charitable contributions to good causes: education and scholarships, medical research and hospitals, the arts, etc.

Somalia, here we come!

2011-04-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

The big buzz-word in American legislative circles these days is "deficit reduction." Let's reduce the size of government, reduce government interference in business, eliminate waste, and by doing all these things restore individual freedoms.
Like pretty much everyone, I favor eliminating government waste -- though we might have some difficulty in defining waste, once we get beyond a few glaring examples.
Let's look first at the society we might end up with if all the cost-cutters were to get their way. (I'll mention a number of proposals at both state and federal levels, because they will all -- from whichever level -- impact how we live, and because they are all expressions of the same mind-set.)
The two major categories of cuts may be in services and in regulation.
Services: States are vigorously cutting funds to education. In North Carolina, funding to universities, to community colleges, and to public schools is being cut. Admissions are being limited, tuitions are being raised (in spite of a North Carolina constitutional requirement that university tuition be essentially free), academic programs are being shrunk or eliminated, teachers are being laid off, class sizes are being increased. Cuts are being considered for many court programs that have been successful at keeping people out of prison (though experts point out that eliminating these programs will actually cost more). Various counseling programs and other programs to help young people stay in school or families stay together are being cut. Cuts are likely or are being considered in services to a wide variety of needy people -- the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the elderly. I could go on and on. Even if not all of these cuts become reality, we are looking at a future in which the well-to-do are surrounded with legions of needy, desperate people, people who cannot afford the medical treatment they need, cannot get trained for good jobs, cannot afford decent housing, and are left to their own devices in their ignorant interactions with the law. Sounds a bit like Somalia to me.
Regulations: Of course we oppose government regulation, particularly of struggling businesses. Or do we? I oppose petty bureaucratic regulation. But is that all there is? There have been innumerable newspaper accounts of tainted meat (because it was not properly produced or inspected), of farm workers harmed by pesticides (because no one was inspecting to be sure the employer did not have his workers use chemicals in a dangerous way), of imported sheet-rock that emitted formaldehyde or other noxious chemicals (again because no inspectors stopped the import or sale, of prescription drugs recalled when people began dying (because the government didn't have the manpower to check these drugs adequately before they were put on the market). The extreme example of lack of government regulation might, again, be Somalia.
So what is appropriate regulation? For me, it's this: I want to be sure that any product or food or medicine I buy is very unlikely to harm me if I use it according to directions. And I want to know that anything I buy is what it says it is -- that I can trust the label (and the advertising) to tell me the truth. And since the goal of any business is to make a profit, and since some businesses will do this by any means they can get away with, we need government regulation to ensure that all businesses play by the rules, selling safe and honest products.
Before we get too busy with our axes, let's give some thought to the kind of society we want to live in. I've given you an idea of the kind of society I want to live in. As I've said, I want a society with enough government regulation to ensure that products and foods and medicines are honest and safe.
And I want responsive government services sufficient to maintain a population that is healthy, well-educated, well-housed, employed. I want my neighbor's kids in good schools, I want any sick or injured person to get good medical care, I want both good roads and good public transit so I and my neighbors can travel where we need to go, safely, conveniently, and economically. I want services available so that abused or neglected kids get counseling or support or protection or whatever they need so that they have an opportunity to grow up to be happy, productive adults.
What kind of society do you want to live in? How much government will it take to provide that? If you want zero government, do you think you might be happier in Somalia?

Why Are You Struggling?

2010-11-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

Long ago, on a Roman galley, the captain tried an experiment. He let everyone on board -- oarsmen and aristocratic passengers -- vote on whether to change to a democratic system, where everyone would take turns, alternately rowing and lounging in the luxurious passenger quarters. Of course the aristocrats voted to retain the existing system. But then, to his surprise, so too did the galley oarsmen.

There is a simple explanation for why you are having a hard time financially, why you are in danger of losing your job or your health or your home, why you don’t have access to the luxuries that more privileged members of society are enjoying.
Why haven’t you realized the truth? In case you are too dumb to figure it out, here it is: It’s because you deserve what you are getting. And because deep down inside, you know this. That’s why you keep making choices that maintain the status quo, that keep you down and struggling.
You don’t believe it? Consider this:
Our legislators obviously believe what I’ve just said. They maintain a tax structure and an economic structure that does what it should do -- it rewards the deserving and punishes the undeserving. In other words, some people get rich, the rich keep getting richer, and the rest struggle to stay where they are, and sometimes, no matter how hard they struggle, they slip downward into poverty.
Look at the statistics -- they’re all around you. You’ve seen them. The top 2% make as much money as the bottom 50%. CEOs get paid on average 400 times as much as their lowest-paid employees. When failing businesses are sold out, the top managers (who ran their companies into the ground) walk away with “golden parachutes” worth millions of dollars.
And at the other end of the scale, 10% of our workforce is unemployed. This country has some 40 million uninsured people. The middle class is getting smaller. More people are in poverty than ever. Millions go to bed hungry every night. Hundreds of thousands of homes are being foreclosed, leaving ever more people homeless.
And how are our governments, local, state, and federal, coping with all this? They are reducing services to those most in need. Thousands of state employees are being laid off, hurting not just them but also all those that they were providing services for. Universities are cutting faculty and course offerings; students must pay higher tuition for fewer and more crowded classes. Public schools are laying off teachers and aides and increasing class sizes. Mental health programs, already appallingly inadequate, are being cut further, leaving the mentally ill in crisis and unable to receive treatment that might save their lives.
Clearly the decision-makers who have brought all this about are acting out of a morality that says that the deserving will be rewarded and the undeserving punished.
And who chose these decision-makers? You did. You have chosen to elect representatives who will carry out your moral values, who will punish you for all your flaws and shortcomings. And as long as you coninue to believe that you deserve the worst, you will keep on electing representatives who will make sure you get it.

Has Obama Failed?

2010-11-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

The hue and cry of the Republicans -- and some Democrats -- has recently been to the effect that the Obama presidency has failed. Key evidence: the continuing high unemployment rate.
Is our economic situation as we want it to be? Admittedly no. Ten percent unemployment is clearly unacceptable. So does this mean that Obama has failed? I would suggest that the implied comparison (where we are vs. where we’d like to be) is erroneous.
The proper comparison has to be between where we are, under Obama, and where we would be if his administration had not done what it has, or -- to put it very bluntly and starkly -- where we would be if McCain had been elected.
Of course, we do not know for sure what McCain and Palin would have done, but we have a pretty good idea, both from those candidates’ statements during the 2008 campaign and from the statements and positions of Republican leaders since. I think it is clear that under McCain/Palin we would be feeling the effects of more tax-breaks for the wealthy, more cuts in government programs for the poor and middle classes,and less effort at economic stimulus.
And what would those effects be? The CBO -- Congressional Budget Office -- recently released some projections that without the Obama stimulus programs, unemployment now might be 13% or 14%. And we can figure that there would be more people losing their homes, more people exhausting their unemployment benefits -- in short, we would be in a major depression, not just a painful recession.
So has Obama failed? Hardly. He has achieved a lot, compared to where the country was when he started and where it might have gotten to with different policies and programs.

And we need to recognize too that what the Obama administration as accomplished has been tempered -- and severely limited and distorted -- by the obstinacy and determination of Republicans to do everything possible to cause Obama to fail, regardless of what might be best for the country.

REAL Job Creation, REAL Prosperity

2010-10-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

I listened yesterday to most of the debate between Sen. Richard Burr and his Democratic challenger Elaine Marshall. The two agreed on at least one thing: the need for more jobs.
But they differed, of course, on how that should be done. If I understand Burr and his Republican colleagues, government should reduce taxes and offer other incentives to business in order to encourage businesses to hire more workers. (Tell me if I am misconstruing their position.)
Unfortunately, this approach involves a vicious circle: Imagine that you are a business owner. You want to hire more people. But you can add employees only when your products are selling well, so well that your existing staff cannot keep up with the orders coming in. Then, when you foresee a continued high demand for your products, of course you will increase your payroll.
And why will your products sell better? They will sell better only because lots of unemployed people have gotten jobs and now have money to spend. In other words, people will buy your products only because you and thousands of other business owners have hired those people. People will buy things because they have jobs; they’ll have jobs only because people are buying things.
Are you, Mr. Small Business Owner, going to stick your neck out and hire, before demand for your products has increased? I think not. Will reduced taxes cause you to hire before demand increases? I think not.

Republicans oppose more government spending, thinking that more spending will mean more taxes, and taxes reduce the economic growth that will come if individuals and businesses keep more of their money. But if the scenario I’ve described above is correct -- and experience seems to confirm it -- then keeping tax rates low, if that also results in low economic growth, will mean reduced revenue for the government and increased deficits even as government expenditures are reduced. It’s a downward spiral.

To me, increased government spending -- if carefully planned and carefully monitored to minimize waste and fraud -- is the way to avoid both the vicious circle and the downward spiral. If the federal government (and state governments as well, for that matter) invests in public works -- primarily infrastructure improvement -- it can put hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of unemployed people to work. And unlike unemployment benefits, these projects would be producing things that would benefit the country for the next half-century or longer. Think “Hoover Dam.” Think “National Park System.” Think “Golden Gate Bridge.”
It’s a no-brainer:
1) We have millions of unemployed, ready and willing to start work.
2) Interest rates are at hitoric lows, so money borrowed for large projects would be cheaper than at any other time.
3) Our infrastructure needs are huge. Thousands of bridges need replacement or major repairs. Streets and highways are crumbling. Rail lines need to be improved or expanded. Our electric grid is a nineteenth-crntury patchwork. National parks are poorly maintained, in spite of -- and because of -- record crowds. Alternative energy -- solar generators and wind turbines -- needs a massive boost to start to free us from dependence on foreign oil. Work on any or all of these areas would provide benefits for the next fifty years.

And look at the cascade of benefits. Millions of formerly unemployed workers will be drawing paychecks. As they spend money -- first on debts and necessities and then on luxuries -- businesses can now afford to grow, putting even more people back to work. As more individuals and businesses pay more in taxes, federal (and state) revenues grow, and the federal deficit can be reduced and eventually eliminated.

Is Obama a Socialist?

2010-09-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

Before we get mired down in arguments about what is or isn't "socialist," let's look at a basic difference in how people look at the relationship of individuals to society and vice-versa.
One basic principle, not a bad one in its intention, is that we should earn everything we get. If we find ourselves helpless, broke, sick, homeless, it's because we didn't plan well enough or work hard enough. The moral implication is that if society is properly structured, virtue -- hard work -- will be rewarded, and vice -- waste, laziness -- will be punished. Who can quarrel with that?
And in normal situations this is a good way to run things. If you work harder, you should earn more. And if you choose to be lazy or to squander your money on gambling or liquor or worse things, it's only fair that you should eventually be poor and miserable.
But what about disasters that we did not bring upon ourselves? What about droughts and famines and forest fires and floods? What about cancer and other devastating diseases not caused by our own stupidity? What about steady workers suddenly thrown out of work?
If you agree that such things happen, then you have to acknowledge that almost all of us could at some time find ourselves in a difficult situation which we did not cause and which we cannot fix by ourselves.
Here is where, for most of us, another principle applies: As a society, we all have a responsibility to care for others, and we all have a right to expect the help of others when disasters strike. Or, as the Bible says, "Do unto others," and "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto Me."
Unfortunately what I seem to be hearing from some politicians (and others) is a rejection of this second principle. "Cut welfare, cut Social Security, cut food stamps, eliminate Medicaid, reduce unemployment benefits," the litany goes on and on. The usual justification for this position is an unwillingness to support lazy bums who don't want to work.
But I think even most bleeding-heart liberals share that unwillingness. And we know that there are abuses of every system that doles out money -- there are always people (and not just poor people) who look for ways to con the system. So let's agree: Every money-spending system needs screening, controls, checks and balances, audits, investigations, and ultimately prosecutions of violators.
That being said, there are needy people, generally people who have worked hard and paid into the system all their lives (or people with legitimate disabilities that have prevented them from doing so). And we as a society, recognizing that "there but for the grace of God go I," have a responsibility (which in the long run may turn out to be enlightened self-interest) to help those in need.
So is this "socialism"? Perhaps. But Obama did not invent it. He has simply seen -- and seeks to enlarge -- this principle of helping the needy as a guiding principle of our caring society, manifested over the past seventy years as Social Security and the more recent Medicare and Medicaid

Gays in the Military--What's the Problem?

2010-02-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

The long-festering issue of gays in the military has again surfaced. And I still haven’t heard anyone explain in simple direct language what the issue is. I can imagine several fears, which get expressed as issues:
One is that some straights (I suspect those with fears of their own possible latent homosexuality) are simply uncomfortable being around gays.
Another is the fear that straight guys will be assaulted by gays in their beds or in the shower.
Another -- perhaps the one behind the resistance by some congressmen -- is the conviction that homosexuality is a sin, and we shouldn’t place these sinners side by side with our virtuous straight men in the military.
And the final one I can think of is the fear of the “homosexual agenda” -- the belief, related to the point above, that homosexuality is a (sinful) choice, and that homosexuals are trying to “convert” straights to be homosexuals.

These last two are matters of ideology, unsupported by any of the research on homosexuality. Medical science is emphatic that homosexuality is a condition, not a choice. And there is no evidence that homosexuals could, or would want to, “convert” others to homosexuality. In my experience, homosexuals want just two things: fair and equal treatment and acceptance, and, perhaps, the freedom to speak to encourage latent or “closet” homosexuals to accept their own homosexuality (which is not at all the same as trying to turn heterosexuals into homosexuals).
As for the first item, I think that is much the sort of thing that was said when the question of racial integration of the military was first considered: “Our boys wouldn’t feel comfortable having to associate with colored soldiers on an equal basis.” I’d say, “Get over it.”

What about the second item, fear of being assaulted by a gay guy in bed or in the shower? How about putting that to a scientific test? It should be fairly easy on a statistical basis. There are some reputable estimates of the number of gays currently in the military under the present “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And there are specific numbers of gays who have been discharged from the military since that policy was imposed.
I assume that if any of those gays were discharged for making homosexual attacks or advances on straight guys, that fact would be documented. And of all the gays currently serving without being identified as gays, they presumably have not attacked or made advances toward straight guys -- or they would have been discharged.
So where are the numbers? How big a problem is this? I suspect that the facts would make clear that it is a vanishingly small problem. All the news reports I have read on the subject mention gays (something like 1300 in the past year, 12,000 in the last fifteen years or so) who were discharged either because they themselves admitted that they were gay or because someone else reported them -- but none of these reports that I have seen mention gays being reported for making advances toward straight guys. More likely it was because someone observed some sort of sexual contact between two gays, or -- who knows? -- overheard a sexually explicit conversation between two gays.

I think it is fair to note that, according to published reports, a woman in the military has far more risk of sexual attack from a male in the military than a straight male does of an attack, or even an advance, by a homosexual in the military.

Sarah Tucker, a Remarkable Woman -- In Memoriam

2010-01-24T08:49:00.000-08:00

Kay and I drove on Thursday from our home in Durham to a funeral in Charlotte, the funeral of an amazing woman I had known for forty-five years (though I didn't realize fully how amazing she was until I heard the testimonials at the funeral).

Here's how I got to know Sarah Tucker:

In the mid-sixties I spent four years as the program director for an ambitious project in a low-income school in Charlotte. The mandate of the program was to select the most promising seventh-graders in six successive classes, work with them in a variety of ways, and prepare them for college. (I've written in more detail about this elsewhere.)

Carlene was one of that first group, and I soon got to know her mother, Sarah. I learned that Sarah was young (just six years older than I) and had been widowed for several years. She had seven small children and no job skills, not even a high school diploma. She was working as a domestic. Realizing that she could not earn enough to provide adequately for her children, she completed her GED and took a secretarial course, which prepared her for a higher-paying job. Then, a couple of years later, having somehow discovered what she really wanted to do, she went back to school again for nursing training, and got into the field she worked in for the rest of her working career. And of course she had to get all this schooling evenings and whenever she wasn't out earning a living.

This was potentially a recipe for disaster for her children -- seven kids at home, no adult supervision, all kinds of attractive trouble outside the home.
But it didn't happen. In a community where half the kids dropped out of school and many got in trouble with the law, every one of her children graduated. Why? She was both loving and firm. She let her kids know that she loved them and had confidence in their worth and their ability. And she laid down the law: "You will go to school every day. You will do your best in school. And you will graduate from high school." I'm not sure if she ever spelled out what she would do if any of the kids broke any of these rules, but I'm sure none of them ever wanted to find out.

So all seven graduated. Most went to college. Two became ministers. One completed a doctorate and became a clinical psychologist. And in later years -- as I learned at the funeral -- when several grandchildren were in danger of getting themselves into serious trouble and ruining their futures, they at various times came to stay with Grandma for a number of months. And they responded to her mix of praise ande support and confidence-boosting, and they turned their lives around -- as they emphatically and emotionally told the two hundred mourners at the funeral.

Restore the Economy by Jobs and Education

2010-01-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

All predictions say that even though the recession is technically over, unemployment will decline only slowly and over several years. Since -- as has been pointed out -- 10% of the population controls some 90% of the investment market, that 10% may be quite comfortable with the status quo, but for the other 90% of us the situation is at least worrisome and, for the 10% who are jobless, the outlook is just plain bleak.

It may be necessary to continue to pump money into Wall Street and big corporations and the like, but none of this has much immediate effect on the jobless.

There has been talk about job creation, but I have heard little emanating from Washington that sounds as though it will do much anytime soon, and what I've heard doesn't sound like a comprehensive coherent plan.

Here's my proposal:
First, some self-evident facts:
1) We are going to have to subsidize the unemployed for a long time.
2) The unemployed, for the most part, have lots of available time.
3) There is much work that needs doing in this country, including a) building/repairing/ upgrading facilities in national, state, and local parks and other public facilities; improving streets, highways, and bridges; building mass-transit (train, streetcar, and bus) roadbeds and rolling stock; c) upgrading the electric grid and transmission facilities; d) developing, manufacturing, and installing alternative power equipment -- solar panels, wind turbines, etc.
4) We are going to need more, and more highly trained, workers for a vast range of technologically advanced fields in the future: alternative power, medical technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and many others.

I would put all these indisputable facts together in this way:
Instead of just providing unemployment checks, let's offer most recipients two alternatives:
1) You can go back to school to learn some advanced skills. Government will put lots more money into paying stipends to those who want to improve their skills -- and perhaps the stipends will be bigger than the unemployment schecks. And while several million unemployed ate back in school, hundreds of thousands of teachers (who might be unemployed scientists and engineers) will also be given employment. And when the recession is truly over, and jobs are again plentiful, there will be a large workforce available of people with new high-tech skills.
2) Or you can move into any of a range of WPA or CCC type jobs: The government will pay wages for people who are available for relatively low-skill jobs improving the nation's infrastructure and public facilities. Many state and local governments have lists of "shovel-ready" jobs, some of which are already being done with stimulus finds. (Or if private companies need a boost to do many of the tasks suggested in (3) above, government might supplement wages, sort of like older OJT -- on-the-job-training -- programs.)

The advantages of this approach to the unemployment situation should be clear. Roughly the same amount of money would be spent, but this way it would produce improvements to the nation's infrastructure and facilities, and it would train a workforce for future jobs.

Bill O'Reilly -- Secrets of Success

2010-01-03T08:54:00.000-08:00

I've just read most of a new book, "A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity," by right-wing commentator Bill O'Reilly (I hope that's the right way to characterize him). The book was given to me by my very right-wing father-in-law, perhaps with the hope that it would help to straighten out my thinking.

Interestingly, I agreed with many of Bill's beliefs -- in justice and fair play, for instance.

But as I read on (and on and on), I realized what Bill's blind spot was. His implicit (and sometimes explicit) argument throughout this childhood-memoir-as-polemic is: "I didn't start out with any advantages, and I made it, so anyone can." He often compares himself with his classmates at various educational levels, classmates who came from wealthy and socially prominent families. He harps on the fact that he had none of their advantages going for him.

Ergo, he's saying, any kid from the slums, any kid from a broken family, any abused child of alcoholic or drug-using parents, has no excuse for not striving and becoming a success.

So where's the blind spot? Right here: Again and again, Bill tells of his somewhat cold and unsympathetic father, who, when Bill came crying to him about some mistreatment at the hands of other kids, would tell him, "Don't come crying to me. Get out there and fix it yourself." And he talks about the nuns at the parochial schools where he got his early education -- they were tough, and their educational and disciplinary techniques may have been questionable, but they set tough standards and demanded that kids live up to them.

(It's a little ironic that as Bill talks about his first teaching job in Florida, he criticizes most of his fellow teachers for failing to set up the sorts of expectations he sets up for his students; he feels that most of the faculty disliked him as much as he disliked them, because he was willing to be tough and they weren't. But he fails to recognize that the majority of students have missed out on something he had and which he as a teacher was trying to instill.)

So Bill, even if he lacked material advantages, had the indispensable advantages of self-reliance, self-confidence, discipline, and high standards. And, though he can claim credit for retaining and using these characteristics, he cannot claim to have invented or discovered them on his own. In his life were some powerful influences -- without which he would almost certainly have amounted to nothing.

The moral: It's not, as Bill accuses liberals of, to coddle criminals and bums because they didn't have the advantages. It's not to overlook criminality and laziness. No. But our moral obligation is to do everything in our power -- as individuals and and as a society -- to create learning environments (and to improve parenting) so that every young person acquires values -- and motivation -- similar to that which inspired Bill O'Reilly to strive, to compete, and to succeed in life.

More on Gov. Perdue's Lifers

2009-12-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

I was pleased to see that the N&O published my letter about Gov. Perdue’s Lifers. Please read yesterday’s blog, an expansion of that letter, before reading this one.

1) Prison authorities have been quoted as saying that the system of reducing sentences through good behavior is an important factor in maintaining order in prison. After all, if you see no possibility of getting out, or at least of getting out early, what incentive is there to be cooperative?
So if the official policy now is that all these earned credits will not count toward an earlier release date, then some prisoners – out of boredom or deep-seated anger – may be inclined to break the monotony by causing disturbances.

2) There is a moral issue here, and perhaps a paradox. These prisoners ended up in prison because they did not follow the rules of society. So it is ironic that the Governor is choosing not to follow the established rules – rules regarding the length of a sentence and the rewards of good behavior in reducing that sentence – in now seeking to redefine the meaning of credits earned for good behavior.

3) The Governor has repeatedly referred to these prisoners as rapists and murderers. Indeed, those are the crimes that got them into prison. The implication of these labels is that, once released, these prisoners would resume their past careers of murdering and raping. While I recognize that her stance on the issue is based at least in part on the attitudes of family members of the victims, I find her wording inflammatory; it is an effort to justify doing what some victims’ family members demand that she do: keep these criminals behind bars and throw away the key. I am disappointed that either she is making a decision based on emotion or she is allowing her rational principles to be influenced by the emotions of others.

4) Admittedly we do not know – with total certainty – what these prisoners might do when released. But we have a pretty good idea. First of all, we know that when they committed their violent crimes, they were in their teens or early twenties. And it is well known that people tend to “age out” of their violent impulses. People in their fifties and sixties are far less likely to be involved in violence than young people. And let’s look at the record these prisoners have compiled: To have their sentences, in effect, cut in half, they have compiled forty years of at least good, and probably exemplary, behavior. At a minimum they have stayed out of trouble, in an environment where that can be very difficult. But many of them (and I would like to see the facts on this published) have furthered their education, helped teach fellow inmates, and generally shown that they have turned their lives around. Some of them have done more with their lives in prison than many people I know of out of prison. If you can compile such a record during forty years in prison, then I, for one, have no fears that you will harm me, and I would be happy to have you as a next-door neighbor.

5) Except for the criminally insane, who might well commit more violent crimes if they were released, the goal of society should be to lock up criminals, to offer them opportunities to be rehabilitated, and then to release them back into society as soon as there is reasonable assurance that they are ready to be good citizens. It makes no sense to spend vast amounts of taxpayer money to imprison people who are not a danger and who could be productive citizens.

Free Gov. Perdue's Lifers!

2009-12-14T05:56:00.000-08:00

This is an expansion of a letter I wrote recently to the Raleigh News & Observer (which might or might not get published):

For those who came in late: Sometime in the 1970s, the courts defined a life sentence as 80 years. And the prison system has a policy of giving credit for good behavior, such that in effect every day in prison can reduce the length of the sentence by a day. And the net effect of these two policies is that a number of prisoners, originally sentenced to life imprisonment for murder or rape, have now acquired enough credits to be released, after serving some forty years.

When a group of these prisoners petitioned for the release to which they said they were entitled, Governor Perdue stepped n to prevent “the release of murderers and rapists that would threaten public safety.” She is having legal experts and the courts examine the rules to redefine them as necessary to keep these murderers and rapists in prison.

After this issue had been in the news for a week or two, the News & Observer had an article about a petition filed by one of these worst-of-the-worst, Faye Brown, who, in prison, has completed a bachelor’s degree, got certified to style hair, is learning to teach others to cut hair, is let out of prison each day to work as administrator at a beauty school, and gets passes twice a month to visit her sister. Yeah, sounds like a real threat to public safety.

The word “penitentiary” is about being penitent, about repenting, rethinking one’s life. And when that happens, the repentant criminal should be re-introduced into society as a contributing citizen. If we’re not willing to do that, we’re cutting off our nose to spite our face. We’re running up our tax bill to maintain these prisoners, and we’re not letting them contribute to society, all because we’re afraid they haven’t paid enough (not because we’re afraid they’re a threat to society).

Not paid enough? Twenty years (let alone forty!) doesn’t sound like much, until you think about missing out on a generation of family events, children, career, your whole life. These prisoners have paid. Let them have what’s left.

On the one hand, I think the cases of these prisoners should be examined one-by-one to be sure we are not indeed releasing people who are a threat to public safety. But it seems to me that if a convict can stay out of trouble in prison for forty years in order to accumulate forty years of credits, that person has been rehabilitated and needs to be let out to become a productive member of society.

Credit-card sharks vs. regulation

2009-11-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

A PBS Frontline program last night documented the thinking and the policies of credit-card companies as they seek maximum income. An interview with the man who, in a sense, started the whole process when he was CEO of Providian was refreshingly (and frighteningly) candid. He acknowledged that Providian had led the way (with many followers) in offering free credit cards (when most competitors were still charging annual fees) but making up the lost income by charging high interest rates combined with huge overdraft and late-payment fees. And of course other credit-card companies and banks saw the possibilities and quickly followed suit.

But this former CEO said something that I think gives a clue to the whole issue of government regulation of business. He acknowledged that his company – like almost every other – will be looking for loopholes in the newly passed credit card law. He said (paraphrased), “You [the government] can make any stupid laws you want, and we will play by those rules. But since our job is to make money, we will be looking for angles, loopholes, that will leave us a way to make a profit.”

I think this is a reasonable attitude, much though we would like every business to be charitable and altruistic – and much though it appears that Congress believes that to be the case when it passes laws that let business monitor itself and make its own rules.

No, let’s have a realistic separation of functions: let us recognize that the function of business is to make money, and one necessary function of government is to set up reasonable but realistic limits on how business can make money.

It appeared from the PBS program that the new law already has numerous loopholes, and credit-card companies will be able to exploit them to make even more money. Since it takes Congress an extremely long time to respond to abuses (and then the influence of lobbyists prevents Congress from really solving the problem), there seems to be an excellent case for a new regulatory agency that can create rules for credit-card companies (and other lending institutions) and modify them in a timely manner if they do not work as intended.

Health Care Reform -- or Abortion

2009-11-19T07:39:00.000-08:00

Killing is bad.
Abortion is killing.
So abortion is bad.

So if a health-care reform bill would in any way pay for -- or even condone -- abortion, it should not be passed.

But wait a minute: is abortion worse than other forms of killing? If your family is penniless and your child dies of malnutrition, is that not a form of killing? If you have a treatable disease but die because you couldn’t afford treatment, haven’t you been killed just as surely as if someone shot you?

How many women have abortions in a year? How many people die because of inadequate health care?

Some experts are saying that some 15,000 people die yearly because they lack access to health care. Either they don’t seek treatment because they can’t afford it, or they are turned away from hospitals or doctor’s offices for lack of insurance.

The counterargument has been that uninsured people can always go to an emergency room and receive treatment. Now there are studies that show that such people have a higher death rate than insured people with the same ailments. Why? Because the uninsured have not received the early interventions -- in the beginning stages of the disease -- and go to the emergency room only when the disease is far advanced. And they do not receive any follow-up after they leave the emergency room. So let’s add these numbers to those who die for lack of access.

And here’s something that perhaps should not be brought up here, since it would be hard to attach numbers to related early deaths, but here it is anyhow: It is well documented that about half of all bankruptcies -- and that’s several hundred thousand a year -- are medical related. Typical scenario: You have a job, and you have health insurance. You come down with a catastrophic illness -- perhaps a cancer that requires long and expensive treatment. You are out of work so long that you lose your job. Soon the health insurance expires or reaches a maximum pay-out level, and the insurance company tells you your treatments will no longer be covered. You borrow, you re-mortgage your house, eventually you declare bankruptcy, and you and your family are penniless. We have read -- anecdotally -- or people who have committed suicide in despair when they find themselves in such a situation. Obviously, there is a heavy economic and emotional cost to this scenario, and undoubtedly a cost in lives as well, even if we’d have trouble attaching numbers to it.

About abortions: I agree with the way Hilary Clinton phrased it: “Abortions should safe, available -- and rare.” Instead of banning abortions, it makes more sense to me to try to remove the conditions that cause unwanted pregnancies. Let’s teach young people -- male and female -- about human dignity, about respect for themselves and their partners, about sex as an expression of love and respect and dignity. And while we teach young people these things, let’s also teach them that if they insist on having sex without the intention of creating babies, they need to take precautions so as not to create babies. If we as a society could succeed in doing these things, there would be very few abortions in any case.

I would urge the anti-abortion opponents of health-care reform to save lives by working on eliminating the need for abortion, and to save more lives by supporting health-care reform.

A Message from Two German Films

2009-11-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

I recently watched two very different German films, made even more interesting in juxtaposition, so that I couldn’t help seeing in them a kind of before-and-after relationship: they sort of book-end the war. Both, I think, qualify as classics. The first, Triumph of the Will, made in 1934 and directed by Leni Riefenstahl, is widely acknowledged as a classic, and may represent the invention of the documentary film. The other, a film adaptation of a diary or memoir published anonymously in 1959, was more or less banned in Gerrmany because it told some very unpleasant truths about World War II and its aftermath.

Leni Riefenstahl was a young woman who had made a number of what we would now think of as Grade-B movies in the late 1920s, and she was, understandably, eager to show what she could do in a major film. Her opportunity came when Adolph Hitler invited her to film the famous 1934 Nuremburg Nazi rally. The rally was in itself a spectacular production: It brought together some 200,000 party members and government officials, all playing carefully choreographed roles, marching in formation, to the beat of stirring patriotic music, furling huge flags and banners, to listen to tributes to Hitler by top Nazi leaders, and to several galvanizing speeches by Hitler. It was a demonstration to Germany and to the world of Hitler’s power and the rising power of the once-defeated Germany.

But it would be mostly forgotten, just a footnote in history books, if not for this magnificent film assembled by Leni Riefenstahl. Hitler gave her full freedom to film the multi-day rally and to edit the result into a documentary film. Looked at today, the film is a masterpiece of cinematography. It shows huge formations of supporters -- the military, unions, a workers’ organization similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps in this country (armed with shovels on their shoulders), Hitler Youth (sort of a politicized Boy Scouts), and others. The film shows overhead views (filmed from a plane or balloon or atop a cathedral -- it’s not clear) of phalanxes of supporters marching into town in a huge parade. Then it shows scenes from the window of a tri-motor plane bringing Hitler to the rally, and then his motorcade into town. The film never gets boring: it cuts from views of the crowds in formation, to the speaker, to individual listeners with rapt looks on their faces. At several points during the rally, Hitler is introduced by his top leaders, always in glowing terms expressing total loyalty and devotion and exhorting the listeners to be equally devoted. For those of us who have seen or read about modern dictators and seen what happens in dictatorships, this is all very disturbing -- as if we didn’t know how it would play out.

And then there are views of several speeches by Hitler. On the one hand, there is the idealistic message of peace, exhorting his listeners (particularly the Hitler Youth) to sacrifice and to work hard to rebuild Germany. All very positive. But then there are a few darker themes that slip in, easy (at that time) to ignore: We need to crush anyone who would hinder us. We will create One People not just by assimilating everyone, but by removing anyone that is not a part of us. And there are subtle hints of a Greater Germany, meaning a Germany that will include neighboring areas (in other countries) where Germans live. So if you watch and listen carefully, you see that the seeds for everything that would happen in the next eleven years is already there.

And of course we know how that played out.

Which brings me to the second film, A Woman in Berlin. The author, who had been a foreign journalist before the war, returned home and then was trapped when Russia and the West advanced into Germany from both sides. She kept a journal of her experiences as the Russians devastated Berlin in late 1944 and 1945. She published the book in 1959, but it met such a negative reaction that she withdrew it. But in recent years it has been made into a very grim but powerful movie.

Why was the book so despised? Because it presented, through the narrative of the author’s experiences and those of women around her, several realities that Germans were at that time not willing to confront. First was the fact that virtuous German women in Berlin, almost without exception, had been raped by Russian soldiers, most of them multiple times, and that many of these women figured out that the only way to avoid more rapes was to ally themselves with officers who could protect them from the predations of common soldiers. Better to sleep with one officer -- who might even have some manners and some human feelings -- than to be at the back and call of any brutal soldier who sees you on the street. So after the war, German men did not want to look at German women -- particularly those in Berlin but elsewhere too -- either as sullied by multiple rapes, or as more or less willing sexual partners of Russian officers. It’s much more comfortable to believe that, even though these things may have happened to some, all the women I know were virtuous and managed to hold themselves aloof from both these alternatives. Sorry, fellows: women who wanted to survive either yielded to any demand or paid for a price for protection. Better bed than dead.

But the movie -- and the book before it -- also contained another indigestible message. Before the Russians take Berlin, one German soldier, a family member, returns home from the eastern front, and drops a figurative bombshell. One of the women, knowing that the advancing Russians are almost certain to take Berlin, asks the soldier what is likely to happen. The soldier says, “If they treat you the way we treated their people, you’ll be lucky if anyone is left alive in Berlin.” Just in case this is not clear enough, the narrator, since she knows a little Russian from the days when she was a foreign correspondent in Moscow, is called to interpret in a confrontation between some Germans and some Russian soldiers. One of the Russians demands that she translate his words. He says, “In our village, the German soldiers killed all the children. They picked them up by the feet and they swung them. They smashed their heads against a wall.” She balks. “Translate this,” he orders. She asks, “Did you see this, or did you just hear about it?” She is obviously hoping that he will admit that this is just hearsay, so she can dismiss it. But no. “I was there,” he says. Obviously this goes a long way toward shattering her faith in her country, and she is going to have to mull over this for a while before she can accept it.

So it’s pretty clear why Germany had a hard time accepting what this book had to say.

But let’s face it: This is the way war is. And the larger moral is that if we abuse the enemy -- raping women or killing children or whatever -- then sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost. But can we be sure that if we treat enemy populations humanely, the enemy will treat our people equally humanely? No. But we can be sure that if we treat enemy populations like animals, they will treat our people badly when the tide turns.

The Need for Regulation

2009-10-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Those who supported deregulation of the financial markets in the past (though perhaps not so enthusiastically now) seemed to have two assumptions underlying their position:

1) People (even financial types) are good, and will do the right thing even if there are no regulations requiring them to -- so we can trust them. (This assumption never seemed to get expressed in words, and when it is expressed it certainly becomes harder to maintain.)

2) The market will make corrections. If there is fraud, it will be eventually found out, and those who cheat will be put out of business by the normal operation of market forces. If any stock or commodity becomes ridiculously overpriced, the market will figure this out and the market will adjust -- without any need for regulators to intervene. (This argument has been expressed, most notably by Alan Greenspan.)

I’d suggest a different way of looking at the market.

I believe that people are basically good -- but subject to temptation. Good people can do bad things. Good people, left unsupervised and unregulated, will all too often succumb to the temptation to make a huge profit at someone else’s expense. So a market without regulation is like a city without door-locks or policemen. Even if most participants (citizens, investors) want to be fair and decent, a few won’t, and they can corrupt the whole system. And before long we have a feeding frenzy.

Will the market make corrections, without any need for regulation? Very likely -- but only over a considerable period of time, by which time many innocent people will be hurt -- their jobs and their savings wiped out. Witness the most recent Wall Street disaster.

So let’s acknowledge these realities, and let’s state them this way:

The purpose of business (whether a restaurant, or a clothing store, or an auto manufacturer, or a bank) is to make money. For many participants, that will mean making money by any means possible. To expect otherwise is to expect sharks and wolves not to act like sharks and wolves.

The purpose, therefore, of government, is to restrain the natural shark-like tendencies of business -- to set up and maintain the rules under which business will be allowed to make money. It is the role of government to protect the customer, the consumer--

-- by requiring honesty -- truth in labelling, truth in lending, contracts that are understandable, products that are as advertised

and

-- by establishing and enforcing standards -- food must be free of harmful chemicals, products must be safe, interest rates must be reasonable.

2009-10-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

The other day I bemoaned the fact that the Raleigh News and Observer rarely published any of my letters, so today they published one. The background is that a prisoner with a life sentence filed to be released. Seems that a life sentence had been defined as 80 years, but for a brief spell -- when this and some 19 other prisoners were sentenced -- a life sentence had been re-defined as forty years. And these prisoners had all served their forty years. And the state suddenly realized why these prisoners had received life sentences: for heinous murders and rapes. The newspaper headlines screamed: "Murderers and rapists to be freed!" Here's my response:

"Given that the convicts expected to be released are all in their 50s and 60s, many having been incarcerated since they were teenagers, I can't help wondering: Haven't some of them perhaps turned their lives around? I realize you wanted to get the headlines out on the street quickly, but don't you have an obligation to tell more of the story? I for one would like to think that prison can transform people -- otherwise why not execute them and be done with it? But even if the crime was horrific, forgiveness must be an option -- as long as there is reason to believe the prisoner will no longer be a threat to society."

The first thing I need to emphasize -- in case it's not clear enough from the necessarily very brief letter to the editor -- is that I'm not urging that these prisoners be automatically released. (It appears that the technicalities of the applicable laws might require that they be released, but authorities are looking for other charges on which they could be convicted and re-sentenced, and the legislature is being urged to pass some sort of law to keep them in prison as well.) But I am urging that those who have in some sense been rehabilitated, those who do not appear to pose any threat to the public, should be released.

Please realize that my question -- "why not execute them and be done with it?" -- is rhetorical. Though I don't believe in the death penalty, I'd be willing to countenance it IF the crime was particularly violent and IF we could be ABSOLUTELY sure that the person was guilty. But, idealist that I am, I'd like to see prison function as a place of rehabilitation, with the goal that just about every prisoner could eventually be released to become a productive citizen. (Yes, I know that's a dream -- we're miles from anything like that now.)

Further, I'd like to see society transformed so that few if any young people become criminals, particularly violent criminals. (Violent crime seems to be largely committed by young men -- few women and few older men.) Look at the background of anyone arrested for a violent crime. It's depressingly monotonous: an emotionally and often sexually abused, unloved child, no effective intervention by schools or social services, a trail of minor but increasingly serious crimes, leading to the big one(s) resulting in that life sentence. (There's one other less frequent but recurrent pattern: the quiet, model child who suddenly explodes and commits multiple violent acts -- think Columbine.) I'd like to see a system that enables us to spot these developing crises and intervene before they erupt.

What we have now is like a sinister version of a Monopoly game, in which some of the players are given a "Go to jail -- go directly to jail" card, and once there, they can't get out. If you are that player, you are destined to be a loser, and there is only a negligible chance you will somehow escape that fate. It'd like to see a system in which we offer a chance for the losers to change their lives and maybe become winners -- losing should not be guaranteed permanent.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent?

2009-10-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I sent off one of my occasional Letters to the Editor of the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer. I had been following the story of a young man who had spent some sixteen years in prison, and now a review of the case made clear that he is most likely innocent and should never have been convicted. While Greg Taylor continued to sit behind bars, the district attorney spoke out. And I felt I needed to speak out too. My letter didn't get printed (my average is about one out of every ten), so I offer it here. (I refer to a "misquote," though of course I know that it was -- unfortunately -- anything but a misquote.) Here's the letter:

"I need to point out a glaring misquote in Wednesday's paper. In the article on Greg Taylor's innocence of the crime for which he has been in prison for the past 16 years, Wake district attorney Colin Willoughby is quoted as saying, "The evidence in this case fails to show by clear and convincing evidence that Greg Taylor is innocent...." Surely no representative of our justice system would argue that you are guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. (Would he?) If that were the standard, few of us would be able to keep ourselves out of prison.
Or have the rules changed?"

Newark -- Laugh or Cry?

2009-10-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

In this morning’s N&O was a column by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, talking about late-night host Conan O”Brien’s mock-feud with Newark (NJ) mayor Cory Booker. O’Brien talks about Newark’s health-care program, which, he says, consists of a bus ticket out of Newark. Jokes like that.

Comedians always need something -- some place -- to joke about. Philadelphia used to be the butt of the jokes. Did you hear about the contest where the second prize was a trip to Philadelphia? And the first prize was you didn’t have to go.

I’m always interested to read about Newark. I was born there, and I spent my childhood in Belleville, an adjacent town, where we were just a half-hour bus-ride from downtown Newark. My pals and I used to ride the bus to Newark to go to Saturday-morning programs at the Newark Public Library and sometimes to a movie, with occasional side-trips to places like Bamberger’s Department Store (where we once -- unbeknownst to our parents -- got into trouble trying to run up the down-escalator). Newark in those days was safe enough that our parents had no worry in letting us go downtown unaccompanied.

As I’ve delved, more resently, into family history and genealogy, I’ve discovered that some of my ancestors were among the founders and first settlers of Newark. When I was growing up, the best-known hotel in Newark was the Robert Treat Hotel, which I now know was named for the early Connecticut governor who led the first expedition to Newark (though he stayed in Newark only long enough to get it established, and then returned home to Connecticut six years later). Newark (like other Newarks in Delaware and Ohio) was named -- depending on which account you want to believe -- either as the “New Ark” or the “New Work.” In any case, it was a Puritan religious settlement, intended (like so many early New England settlements) to return to the purity and virtue which the founders thought were being lost in the older settlements they came from.

But all that’s a long time ago, and Newark has undergone several cultural transformations since.

And what has happened to inner cities isn’t a laughing matter. Herbert goes on to express the hope that all the joking will result in some serious focus on the real problems of Newark and other cities -- he talks about Camden and Chicago, and we know the same problems confront other cities as well. Problems of poverty, unemployment, poor schools, high drop-out rates, high crime rates, and high incarceration rates.

He juxtaposes two ironically similar numbers: the proposed 40,000 increase in the troops sent to Afghanistan, and the 40,000 teachers laid off in the past year -- what does that say about our priorities? If we can afford to fight multi-billion dollar wars abroad and not worry about the cost, then cost should be a minor consideration when we contemplate the wrong we do to our most needy citizens and the damage we do to the country by ignoring these desperate needs.

We're eating our seed-corn!

2009-10-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

We're far enough away from pioneer times that many now don't understand "eating your seed-corn." In that difficult era, you'd grow as much as you could, knowing that it had to do two things: feed you all winter, and seed the fields in the spring for the next year's crop. If the crop had been poor or the winter long, you might be very hungry when you'd eaten the feed-corn and all you had left was the seed you needed for next year. But if you ate that, there wouldn't be a crop next year. Farmers then knew that no matter how hard the winter was, you couldn't eat your seed corn.

The crop that should matter to all of us is our young people -- the next generation, those who will provide not just the brawn (not much of that is needed these days) but the brains to invent and develop and produce the ideas and technology a competitive society needs -- if it wants to stay competitive.

When I started in the job-training/manpower-development field in the late '60s, it was accepted government policy to expand training opportunities when unemployment rose. How better to be sure of a trained workforce when the economy started growing again? And it made lots of sense to pay people a stipend to go to school rather than just hand out unemployment checks or welfare money (though there might still be a need for some of that). Either way, you put money in the hands of people who need it, but this way you got something back by investing in a future skilled workforce.

With all this in mind, I have been shocked to read almost daily about the state and local governments and the universities cutting back on education, laying off teachers, dropping courses, raising tuition, and generally making it harder for young people (and older ones too) to improve themselves.

And, ironically, by using hard economic times as an excuse for cutting back on education, government has made hard times harder by increasing the amount of unemployment. Penny-wise and pound-foolish!

Afghanistan -- The Other Side

2009-10-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I gave a lengthy set of reasons why we could not win in Afghanistan (implying that we should get out as fast as possible). I mentioned the problems with Karzai's weak, corrupt, and unpopular government; the tribal/feudal nature of Afghan society; resentment toward outsiders of any sort; and the impossibility -- even with a large high-tech army -- of defeating a passionate rag-tag army of insurgents who travel light and know the country. I think all these arguments are valid.
But then there's the other side (isn't there always?), all having to do with what happens if/when we leave.
1) Will the Taliban take over the whole country again? Most likely, unless we can somehow structure things to prevent it.
2) If the Taliban again takes control, will Al-Quaeda resume using Afghanistan as a base for training and operations? Same answer.
3) What will happen to civilians that have cooperated with us, or to girls and women? Unless we can leave a stable decent government in place, many innocent people will suffer and die at the hands of the Taliban.
So what do we do? It's stupid to stay, and it would be wrong to leave. Great choices.
A columnist in the Raleigh N&O suggested several things: 1) Don't accept the recent stolen election. Put all kinds of pressure on Karzai. If the country had a government that a majority of citizens had chosen and therefore had some confidence in, there might be a chance that the central government would have some authority and might create some stability in the whole country or much of it. 2) While beefing up Afghan forces, the US and its allies should operate with extreme accuracy and precision in removing Al-Quaeda and Taliban leadership. 3) I'm not sure if this point was in the article, but I think it is imperative -- spelling out the preceding point -- that we minimize civilian deaths -- "collateral damage" -- because every civilian death may well translate into three or five or ten recruits for the insurgents. 4) If foreigners -- we and our allies -- must stay in the country, we need to be as inconspicuous as possible. For some insurgents (and prospective insurgents), the very sight of "invaders" arouses them to resistance.

Evaluating Our Role in Afghanistan

2009-10-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

Remember when Iraq was just heating up? The administration was talking about "victory" in the Iraq War, but no one -- to my mind at least -- ever defined what "victory" would mean. It seemed that it might mean that there were no longer any insurgent attacks, which would have to mean no more insurgents. But more about that below, in the Afghanistan context.

So what are we fighting for in Afghanistan? Let's first state some mostly undisputed truths: Though we seem to be fighting, at least in part, to support the Afghan government, there is little dispute that Hamid Karzai's administration is weak, incompetent, corrupt, and disliked by a large part of the population. Another fact: Afghanistan has never had a national government; it is a feudal region (nation?), ruled by local warlords who have never accepted rule from outside their territory and who dislike and distrust outsiders. At least part of the insurgency is fed by men who, sharing these values, want to drive invaders -- particularly Westerners -- out.

Another fact: War is messy. When it consists of two orderly armies attacking each other on the battlefield, there may be some hope of minimizing civilian casualties ("collateral damage"). But when one large, well-equipped orderly army is fighting a rag-tag guerrilla force that hides in the landscape and among the civilian population, that well-equipped army is almost certainly going to kill and injure an appallingly large number of civilians. And in any culture, but particularly in one where there is a strong code of honor calling for revenge (think Hatfields and McCoys), every civilian death might lead to five more insurgent recruits.

So we have a peculiar logic at work here. The more we attack insurgents, the more civilians we will kill. The American military in Afghanistan is saying we need 40,000 more troops, and ironically the more troops there are, the more insurgents there will be.

So define "winning" for me.

Schools fail half of disadvantaged students!

2009-10-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the Raleigh News & Observer pointed out the appalling statistic that about 52% of disadvantaged students -- defined as those on the free and reduced-cost lunch program -- will graduate. So 48% drop out or otherwise fail to graduate. This is spite of a "successful" diversity (= busing) program. (Schools can be successful even if their students aren't.)
I've been trying to pay attention to what the schools are doing about this massive problem. From quotes in the paper by school administrators and school board members, local and at state level, and plans and mission statements of individual schools and school systems, it sounds as though improved teaching is seen as the solution. To be sure, we need to get rid of incompetent teachers and upgrade the competencies of the others. And yes, we need more and better counselors, and better food in lunchrooms. Durham is even proposing to beef up the truant-officer program (though they call it something more fancy-sounding now).
But there's a problem with all of this. It may all be necessary, but it's not enough.
None of it addresses the basic problem: There are lots of kids, particularly in disadvantaged communities, who don't like going to school. Going to school for many is frustrating, humiliating, boring -- everything that does not build self-esteem, pride, sense of belonging and acceptance.
I haven't heard anyone talk lately about Maslow's Hierarchy, and some people have their quibbles with it, but it represents, in general, a useful concept and tool for studying what motivates us.
In case you've forgotten, Maslow's Hierarchy says that humans have a number (5 or 7, depending on how you divide things up) of levels of need, that work this way:
Most basic are the SURVIVAL needs, which must be met before we can focus on any higher-level needs. If you are cold or hungry (or you need to go to the bathroom), your mind is on that issue, and you will blank out almost anything else that is going on.
Next higher come SECURITY needs. If you're not desperately hungry, you will worry about physical safety. In the modern world, we worry about having insurance or losing our home and also things like being robbed or attacked on the street.
Next comes the relative luxury of SOCIAL needs. If I'm not hungry or frightened, I can focus on having friends and whether people like me.
And then come ESTEEM needs. Once I'm in a fairly good place with all these more basic needs, I can think about excelling, about competing, about becoming rich and famous.
And at the very top is SELF-ACTUALIZATION, a level many people -- trapped at lower levels -- never reach. This is the level where you think ethically, spiritually, creatively.
(This is a very brief overview. For more, go to Wikipedia or other on-line sources.)
Let's look now at a stereotypical disadvantaged student. Where is he on Maslow's hierarchy? The answer -- as with all of us -- will vary from hour to hour and day to day. But basically (not always) he has enough to eat and a place to sleep. He may have some safety issues -- how to avoid getting beat up by some of the bullies in his neighborhood. When he's not worried about those issues, he needs friends, a sense of connection with those around him. And here's where the school falls down. He may not see many of his fellow students -- particularly those from better-off neighborhoods -- as his friends, and teachers even less so. His best friends are likely to be in his neighborhood (and they are likely to make clear that the best way to be a friend is NOT to do well in school). And now, assuming he has some friends, he needs self-esteem -- he needs to be recognized as being good and competent and reliable. And here's where the school really falls down. In school, he feels dumb, looked down on, unable to keep up. Why try?
Now it's great -- and necessary -- to staff the schools with good teachers, but teachers are not really equipped to deal with this youngster's esteem issues. Their job is to teach, to motivate the somewhat lethargic by generating an enthusiasm for learning, but not to provide all the missing ingredients in the hostile youngster's psyche.
We need to think outside the box -- the box being the classroom. We need to provide alternatives to what the neighborhood provides, so that the hostile youngster can feel good about learning, instead of needing to turn to neighborhood influences that make him feel good only by not learning. Those influences are offering this youngster a way to reach the third or fourth level on Maslow's Hierarchy. School programs -- probably outside the classroom -- need to offer this youngster the same opportunity so that he can meet his higher-level needs in school instead of outside.
See my pieces on Project Opportunity for a discussion of one way this can be done.

Choices need comparisons

2009-10-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

We are confronted constantly with the prospect of change. Change itself is a different matter: once it happens, all we can do is figure out how to deal with it. But the prospect -- that involves decision-making, whether we are trying to decide whom to vote for or whether to buy a new car, or how we feel about proposed health-care reform.
Too often, the choice is presented as being between the status quo and the new arrangement -- usually a bogus choice, since if we reject the change, the status quo will change in some other direction, and that's what we must calculate and compare with.
An example: Forty years ago when I was living in Charlotte, before the advent of its expressway system, I attended a neighborhood meeting hosted by city officials to present plans for the first segment of downtown expressway. Wonderful. With these wide straight expressways, everyone will be able to zip around town without worrying about traffic. What could be better? Then I raised my hand, knowing what I had seen during a year in Germany: "What provision is being made in all these expressway plans for mass transit?" Silence. Then the response: "None." The shocked look on my face must have convinced the speaker that more explanation was in order: "People in Charlotte prefer to ride in their own cars."
So here's what I'm talking about: The speaker was, without really thinking about it, implying a choice: We can either drive our own cars, or we could ride in Charlotte's existing buses -- dirty, noisy, unreliable, and slow. And it's perfectly clear what any sensible person would choose. The other possibility -- fast, clean, quiet, dependable, modern trains, buses, and streetcars -- was not part of the calculation, and no one considered offering that alternative to the citizens.
In our personal choices -- say, whether to buy a new car or heating system -- it's also a choice between at least two options: What will my total costs be over five years with a new car, vs. keeping the old one? The old one is paid for, so no car payments that way. But what about repair costs? What about costs if the old one dies on the road, miles from home? This is the difficulty with using the status quo as one of the options -- the status quo will change, but how?
Without going into all the arguments in the health-care-reform debate (let's save that for another day), let me just point out that this involves the same kinds of choices. First, we can look at one of the proposed new plans. How will that work for me? for the typical person? for a person with a "pre-existing condition"? What will the actual costs (premiums, co-pays, out-of-pocket payments) be, under this or that set of conditions?
But then, what are we comparing that with? If the comparison is with the present system, we have to run through all the same possibilities, as with the new plan being considered. And -- the hard part -- we have to factor in the likely changes in the existing system, starting with the fact that the existing system is not static but is getting 8% more expensive every year.
In other words, it's not sufficient to dismiss the proposed new program with, "It's too expensive." The question is, "How expensive will the new plan be (for you and me, for the government, for people without insurance now, etc.) compared to how expensive it will be -- with future cost increases -- for all these various groups if we don't implement one or another of the proposed plans?"

Should we educate illegal immigrants?

2009-10-01T05:28:00.000-07:00

North Carolina recently adopted what I would consider a compromise resolution to the question of educating -- and providing other public services for -- illegal immigrants, by allowing them to attend community colleges, provided they graduated from North Carolina high schools, and provided they paid out-of-state tuition.
The arguments against providing education and other services to illegal immigrants are
1) that this is a financial burden on taxpayers,
2) that caring for illegals may deprive citizens of the services they deserve, and
3) that offering services encourages more illegals to come. There may be a degree of truth to all these arguments, though the evidence is not conclusive.
On the other side, I would offer one core moral principle: In this country, we should not have any second-class citizens. That was what the civil-rights struggle was all about. "Ah," some will say, "but these illegal immigrants are not citizens." True, technically. But morally and practically, not true. If there are people living among us, and they expect to remain her permanently, and we have no plans to deport them, then for practical purposes they are our fellow-citizens.
I see a black-and-white choice: We need to either 1) deport illegal aliens, or 2) treat them as citizens. I think it is both morally wrong and not healthy for our society to let them stay here, on the one hand, and to deny them full participation in our society and economy, on the other hand. As for how we handle the technicalities of bringing them into full citizenship, there are lots of proposals -- everything from a blanket amnesty to a gradual, perhaps decade-long, process of application and preparation. But I'd say that regardless of the process chosen, one way or the other, anyone we allow to remain here needs to be brought into full citizenship -- because I for one don't like the idea of living in a society with an inferior under-class -- and that's what we'll have if a significant part of our population is uneducated, underpaid, and sick. Such a situation hurts not only them -- but all of us.

Diversity--Not the only way to fix schools

2009-09-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wrote a response/comment to the Opinion Piece in the N&O by Christopher W. Marsch entitled “A System Trying to Hide Its Failures.” By the time I winnowed my already-brief response down to the requisite 1000 characters, it became pretty cryptic. Here’s a more useful response:

Marsch’s piece was one of a pair: His pointed out the fact that Wake Schools are failing large number of students. The companion piece was justifying school busing for the sake of diversity, and arguing that improved average test scores prove the value of this policy.

I come down on Marsch’s side. It doesn’t matter how good the averages are if significant numbers of students aren’t being helped. (Remember the statistician who was lying with his feet in a fire and his head on a block of ice? He said that, on the average, he was quite comfortable. Perhaps the Wake Schools are “quite comfortable.”)

What’s the point of diversity? At heart, it’s this: Children (like adults) are influenced by the culture around them. If a school is predominantly poor (by which we might mean, variously, economically disadvantaged, with poorly educated parents, in a run-down community, minority, etc. -- take your pick), then the dominant school culture may be (but doesn’t have to be) one that tells the kids, “Don’t go to school every day, don’t do your homework, don’t speak up in class -- it’s not cool.” Most kids in that environment (like most of us in ours) are looking for rewards. And where do they get them? Most likely, from their peers more than from the school. Doing well in school will seem to offer little pay-off, and will cost them the support and respect of their peers.

School busing tries to counteract this culture. The rule of thumb is that if this defeatist culture is promoted by no more than 30% of the students, then the other, the middle-class, culture and values will prevail. Maybe. But there are at least two problems: 1) Many of these kids now exposed to middle-class values may already be so far behind academically that catching up would require more effort than they think possible. And 2) at the end of the day, these kids return to their own neighborhoods, where they have plenty of incentives to return to the values they have been bussed out of. So diversity, in the form of busing, is not a magic cure-all. And if we look beyond the gross (“average”) statistics to the kinds of issues Marsch is talking about, it might turn out that busing-for-diversity is counterproductive

I think one argument for busing has been that no other policy can combat the failure-culture of schools in poor neighborhoods. But I’d like to suggest another approach, one that works at changing that failure-culture in place.

Many years ago in a disadvantaged school in Charlotte I conducted a program called Project Opportunity, funded by the Ford Foundation and operated in a total of eleven schools around the South. Its plan was to select the top 10% of 7th graders each year for six years, and work with each group until they graduated, doing everything possible (not defined at first) to prepare them for college. I urge you to read in detail about the program and its results on my website, www.csanford.com (click on “This I Believe,” then on Project Opportunity). In a nutshell, virtually no one dropped out, most participants attended college, those that didn’t went to community colleges, and -- significantly -- the school’s previous failure-culture changed.

The key reasons for these successes were, I think, not even intended but just happened: (1) The enrichment activities -- field trips, tours of factories, attending plays and concerts, book-discussion groups -- were considered fun. The kids (at first) weren’t there to learn things, but to go on trips, to have a good time. But the learning took place. And non-participants heard about the fun and wanted to get in too. (2) Non-participants who asked were told that if they did well in school,they could get in next year. Many did. Many more started doing their school work because they wanted to get into the Project.

These are simple ingredients. But they can change a school -- and the lives of kids.