Cause / Effect Misidentification

Matt Taibbi has an insightful article on the recent faux populist movement being spurred by Fox and the Conservatists. In it, he cites the inclination of these groups to blame, not the culprits, but those reacting to wrongdoing, for the ills in society that the actual culprits have caused. In what he terms the “peasant mentality,” he describes clearly the inclination of the loyal worker to support his (corrupt) bosses while railing against a trumped-up phantom opponent from the same strata. The banks are failing because of idiotic investments and overeager lending? Blame the folks who took out mortgages without reading the reams of fine print. Bail out AIG, which squandered its financial base in the fund markets? It's the protesters against the bailout who are at fault for cramping capitalism. The list is endless.

Taibbi supports his arguments well. But there may be an additional facet to the argument: opponents of real politico-economic reforms tend to blame those reacting to the injustices rather than the injustices themselves. This is identification, not with peasantry, but with power.

Take, for example, the Abolitionist movement of the 19th century. The loudest pro-slavery complaints against Abolition weren't about the excessively narrow definition of human rights the pro-slavery community observed, nor about the skewed economic model slavery fostered. They were about the inconvenience of the Abolitionists to their way of life. Actually owning slaves wasn't required for this position: only identification with the slaveholders, and recognition that their rights and livelihood were threatened, was sufficient. Abolitionism interfered with slaveholders' property rights. Abolitionism hindered their ability to earn a living. Abolitionism threatened their way of life. All the pro-slavery adherents' problems would go away – if only those dratted Abolitionists kept their mouths shut.

The same could be said for the emergence of labour unions during the same time period. Unions, which at their inception were about workers' rights to a safe workplace, reasonable working hours and meaningful compensation, were to industry a blight and a threat. Again, owning a business was inconsequential to the position, while relating to the business owner rather than the employee was essential. Unions prevented industry from being effective. Unions prevented business from achieving profitability. Unions inhibited normal business. Industry would prosper and enrich the nation – again, if only those pesky organizers didn't keep mucking things up.

In each case, a movement sparked by injustice is derided by those in authority as contrary to the common weal, even though the common weal itself is harmed by the actions of those in authority and the movement against that harm is inspired by that condition. This is more complex than a “shoot-the-messenger” response: those opposed to such actions are genuinely – if misguidedly – convinced that the status quo is good for all (or at least, good for all worth considering) and that the changes sought are an imposition on (in their eyes) good, law-abiding people who have done no wrong. There is no recognition of harm done by the engines of exploitation themselves, only that done by those seeking to redress those injustices. Likewise, the law itself is not at fault - only those seeking to amend the law (to be more equitable) are to blame.

The chief problem occurs when those not part of that particular movement side with those who oppose it rather than those who support it out of identification with the opponents rather than the supporters. Abolitionism was rejected by the antebellum South as an infringement on individual and states' rights, even by the substantial percentage of the Southern populace that did not and never would own slaves themselves. Anti-labor sentiment is high in the Southeastern US, who see unionisation as an affliction of the industrialised North rather than a boon to all workers, and remain infatuated with the concept of entrepreneurship despite the predominance of wage labour in that area which would benefit from organisation. Likewise, the modern opposition to anti-corporatism, particularly the anti-corporatism spawned by the obscene levels of greed and mismanagement that characterised the financial industry of late, stems not from a philosophical difference with that opposition but with identification with the status quo and rejection of reform as detrimental to the current economic structures. Aspiration is more significant than status here: the detractors of the anti-banking clamour are as likely to see themselves in the mold of the banker rather than the borrower.

The false nature of a “populism” ginned up by Conservatists and a major broadcaster is nearly self-evident to those who disagree with the principles on which it is presumably based. However, the segment of the populace that follows along with that false populism continue to do so largely because they identify not with the justly aggrieved but with those they perceive as oppressed by demands for justice. The trick to their enlightenment is not to paint them as a small-minded underclass but to educate them on the detriment they are causing their own well-being and that the very same detriment is done to them largely by those they follow.

H/T Bark Bark Woof Woof.

'Blogging Forecast

With today being Tax Day, I expect I'll be preoccupied with more immediate things than posting updates.

SSAD Becoming Epidemic

Andrew Sullivan puts it very succinctly.

UPDATE: For those of you searching this in a vacuum, see "A Case Of SSAD" for detail.

Lipton v. G.I. Joe

Some people just don't know how how not to make enemies.

Tomorrow, tea baggers in Pittsburg, KS, plan to hold their protest at the Pittsburg State University Veterans Memorial Amphitheater. Speaking at that event will be Rep. Lynne Jenkins (R-KS). Veterans are expressing concerns at having a partisan event on this “hallowed ground“:

– “It’s everybody’s right to have a protest, but our complaint is that it’s at the Veterans Memorial. Most people think of the Veterans Memorial as a sacred place. It’s a place to reflect, to remember why we’re here today and the people who have sacrificed for that.” [Bob Torbett, director of the American Legion Riders and a member of the Kansas Patriot Guard]

– “I’m not so sure the Veterans Memorial is the appropriate place for a tax protest.” [Charles Heath, Commander of American Legion Post 64]

– “This is something that really upset me. The Veterans Memorial, as far as I’m concerned, is hallowed ground. To have a partisan, political ‘tea party’ there really offends my sensibilities.” [Bob Torbett, veteran of the Korean War]

Veterans have been a staunch Conservative bloc: ticking them off is unlikely to help matters.

Froming the Lanunage of The Constissuetion

The past few years have given us many priceless (if cringeworthy) moments from the Conservatists. It occurs to me that they don't really believe in representative democracy, are disinterested in the documents that created it no matter how often they cite them, and are enamoured of a totalitarian state so long as it does what they want.

In Iowa, for instance, we have a gubernatorial candidate who thinks that as governor he can override a state supreme court decision, and that doing so is right and proper. And related to the recent decision there, we have pundits that think that law is perpetual once written, and that judicial decisions that modify or reverse law are advisory and not compulsory.

We have the Conservatist pundit class, instead of "supporting the President" as they harped for the last eight years, doing their best to go for the jugular when the current administration is faced with its first international incident.

And we have multiple voices in the 'blogosphere that seem to think that DHS investigation and monitoring, while OK for Islamofascists, Liberals and other apparata of the New World Cryptomuslim Marxofascist Order, is horrifically unjust when directed at Far Right extremist groups.

At every point, the public policies the Conservatists embrace are produced by one particular governmental body - which, at that moment, the Conservatists demand be the only one listened to by lawmakers. Conversely, any governmental body that does something the Conservatists dislike is immediately proof of some vast effort to eliminate them - and therefore eligible for immediate and permanent dissolution.

The pattern evolving from this behaviour is one where the Conservatists display supreme unhappiness with representative democracy. The ideal they seek is one where any and all branches of government are staffed by strict adherents to their philosophy and advocates of its agenda. Agreement with this is, by their arguments, rational; disagreement is somehow worse than a lack of patriotism but not quite approaching outright blasphemy. A court decides a case not entirely in their favor? Oust those "activist judges." A legislature passes a law they don't like? Recall the legislators that voted for it, take the law to court, and protest about legislators "not doing the people's work." A referendum doesn't go the way they want? They failed - at "educating the people about the severity of the problem." In each case, it's not their cause that's the issue; it's that the various organs of civic authority don't act according to their very specific wishes, and that means that the system is somehow flawed.

The only system that would actually make these people happy, from these instances, is a totalitarian system tailored to their specific goals. A theocratic nation, created according to their precise ideals and run by strict adherents to their philosophy, is the only defensible political construct that would appease them.

There are two problems with this.

First, it's already been tried. In a place called Europe, a country coalesced that was called the Holy Roman Empire. It dictated acceptable behaviour, the beliefs of the populace, and held all accountable to a strict legal code based on the Teachings of the Church. The chief problem with this is that the Holy Roman Empire collapsed centuries ago, in no small part because the philosophical ancestors of the new Conservatists decided that the status quo was wrong, the Church was misleading people, and that the corruption inherent in the religiopolitical structure was intolerable. Somehow, though, they fail to see that the same cycle would be repeated - after much oppression of dissidents, suppression of the populace and erroneous philosophy inflicted on the people - in the governmental form that most accommodates their worldview.

Second, the only reason these people are able to spew this bile is because of a little thing called The Constitution. Freedom of speech, of assembly, and of worship are all guaranteed in that document. This was done precisely because their philosophical ancestors saw what had been done in other countries where the dissent the Conservatists now despise was suppressed, and sought to prevent such in the new government they were creating. Also, their own philosophy was once dissent in those very nations that influenced their predecessors, and was suppressed at least as ruthlessly as they would suppress dissent in their ideal nation. They would throw away the entire legacy of their nation in this misguided effort to "save" it.

The Conservatists insist, despite their behaviour, that they believe in the Constitution. But they treat it the same way they do Leviticus: they keep the Second Amendment the same way they tout Leviticus 18:22, and throw out all the rest since it doesn't suit their agenda.

H/T to The Phydeaux Speaks Experience for the title's inspiration.

It's Nothing But Pyramids And Sand*

A while back I 'blogged about the economic downturn hitting Dubai. It seems that, as things continue to worsen globally, the veneer is coming off the emirate and the shaky ground it based its fortunes on is becoming apparent.

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats,... there are the Emiratis,... and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means "City of Gold". In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

...

Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means... The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Golf Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.

Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre, sounds sombre as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you take on the desert, you will lose."

Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.

...

On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city's endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.

I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK," she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!" But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand."

As the oil income drops, as foreign investment plummets, this jewel in the desert is fast becoming a worthless lump of sand. And the groups that live there, watching how the place works, find themselves either struggling to get by or politely ignoring those struggling among them. The gloss is falling off Dubai, and the ugly means by which this modern marvel was created are starting to show.

* from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Unfinished Work

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof put up a marvelous takedown of New Republic assistant editor James Kirchick's recent commentary in the Washington Post about the state of the LGBT movement.

Kirchick:

Just in time for spring wedding season, gay marriage activists are celebrating a triumphant few weeks. Last Tuesday, the Vermont legislature effectively legalized same-sex unions in that state. Days earlier, the Iowa Supreme Court had ruled that a statute barring gay marriage was unconstitutional. And here in the nation's capital, the D.C. Council voted unanimously to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

But amid all the history being made, one gay rights organization did something really historic: It announced that it would shut its doors at the end of the year, because its mission was complete.

Formed in 1999 to lobby for the right of gay couples to adopt children in Connecticut, Love Makes a Family was the lead organization advocating for same-sex marriage in that state. It successfully lobbied lawmakers to pass a civil unions bill in 2005, but fell short of achieving its ultimate goal until last October, when the state supreme court ruled that the Connecticut constitution endows same-sex couples with the right to marry.

"Mission accomplished" is one of the most difficult things to say when your organization depends on working toward a cause, but Love Makes a Family did it. And other gay groups may soon need to follow suit. If the gay community truly wants to achieve equality, it will have to overcome a victim mindset that is slowly becoming obsolete.

[...]

Once the goals of an organization with a specific mission are achieved, as Love Makes a Family's were last October, it should relish its victory, cease operations and move on. This is the sign of communal maturity. The continued operation of a gay rights organization in the state that was the first to institute marriage equality and that has the most progressive gay rights laws in the country reflects a sense of eternal victimhood.

[...]

This is a realization that comes easier to younger gays like me (I'm 25) than to older ones. For people who grew up in a time when being open about one's homosexuality could result in being fired or thrown into prison, it's harder to move out of a mindset that sees the plight of gay people as one of perpetual struggle. This attitude is all the more pronounced in those who hold leadership positions in the gay rights movement, as their life's work depends upon the notion that we are always and everywhere oppressed.

It's in the culture of any institution to justify its existence. This is especially so with civil rights groups, which thrive on a sense of persecution, real or perceived.

BBWW:

In the first place, "the notion that we are always and everywhere oppressed" isn't just a notion. It's a fact, both in state, federal, and local laws and in large segments of the majority religious faith -- Christianity -- in this country. It's not just a notion when the state of Florida still bans adoption by gay couples for no other reason than they are gay. It's not just a notion when 46 states can still discriminate against same-sex couples getting married. It's not just a notion when members of Congress can still advocate amending the Constitution of the United States to specifically target a significant portion of the citizenry of the country based solely on an innate trait such as sexual orientation. And it sure wasn't a notion to Matthew Shepard or any of the other countless gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgender and others who have faced brutality, cruelty, demonization, and terrorism, sometimes at the hands of their own family. It's all too clear that oppression, real or perceived, is out there.

It's not as if passing laws or achieving a victory means the battles are over. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville and I were discussing this via e-mail today, and she noted that "the National Organization for Women was founded in founded in 1966 as a general women's advocacy organization, but, by virtue of the politics of the time period, had a heavy focus on Roe -- which they've STILL got to defend today, almost 40 years after its passage. Is there any reason to expect that same-sex marriage will just be a 'done deal,' given what's happened in California?!" Absolutely not.

Mr. Kirchick is correct in saying that some civil rights groups -- or at least elements of them -- tend to perpetuate their own existence and could conceivably outlive their usefulness, but that may be more a problem within the group, not the cause itself. And at the risk of taking a page from Benjamin H. Grumbles, this young whippersnapper wouldn't be able to come out with an article like this if it hadn't been for old farts like me and the people who stood up at Stonewall in 1969, or going back further, who literally risked life and fortune to form the Mattachine Society and advocate for gay rights in 1950, two years before I was born. At the tender age of 25, he has benefited from the work -- not to mention the pain and suffering -- of a lot of men and women, gay and straight, who worked to give him a world where he can sit there are blithely say, gee, thanks, you made your point, now shut up and go away.

I started to add my own thoughts on the matter at BBWW, but the posting ran into comment limitations, so I'm posting them here instead.

I hate to draw comparisons with the GWoT here, but NTodd's comment at BBWW ("Oh, Mission Accomplished? Awesome! [hangs up tiara]") reminded me that the struggle against terrorism, loudly proclaimed complete in May '03, is still going on. A key milestone does not a victory make, any more than a crushing defeat signals the end of a particular movement or philosophy.

The LGBT rights movement has had both a cyclical history and an expanding sphere of interest. Between Stonewall and the '80s it was all about the novelty of being gay, the demand for recognition that being gay shouldn't require imprisonment or therapy, and that respect as human beings should be universal. HIV knocked all that out of the argument as the Right used the disease as a cudgel against "immorality" and "sin" and the LGBT rights organisations became more concerned with (literal) survival than equality. I remember, for example, more protests against Burroughs Wellcome or Glaxo than against public policy from those days. Reagan and Thatcher certainly didn't help matters any, and popular support from other quarters kept them in power for most of that decade. Once the epidemic became manageable through the new drug regimens, and diagnosis was no longer an automatic death sentence, the movement relaxed a bit - just in time for the 1993 Hawai'i court decision which struck down that state's marriage law and fueled the SSM movement. The whole "defense of marriage" shtick is a product of backlash from opponents allowed traction at a time when the LGBT lobby grew complacent.

Likewise, the sphere has expanded from its roots. 1960s gay activism was about middle-class white men. The modern movement includes lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals and others with gender identity concerns, LGBT people of colour - virtually the entire range of non-hetero sexual identities and non-hetero non-missionary sexual practices (I'm thinking particularly of the SM community, but there are certainly others). As our understanding of gender identity and healthy variances in sexuality has grown the movement has expanded to include them. Those battles are certainly not over.

I'm glad that Love Makes A Family feels that its goals are achieved, and that its task is done. But the end for one civil rights organisation is not the end of a civil rights struggle. GLAAD, Lambda Legal, CT Civil Rights Defense Coalition, Queers Without Borders and a host of other organisations remain active in that state. Love Makes A Family may be no more, but that has as much to do with the luxury of other groups' continuing work as it does with the fulfillment of LMAF's advocacy.

The unfortunate part of all this is that active resistance to LGBT equality is fast becoming both a religious and regional phenomenon. The chief opponents are religious extremists (Christian and Muslim groups chiefly though there are more) and reactionary Conservatives - though those two groups are frequently indistinguishable. In the US there is good reason to claim that acceptance at least has been achieved outside two dividing lines: the Mason Dixon Line and the Continental Divide. North and West of those markers tolerance at least has been largely achieved, California's Prop 8 notwithstanding; South and East of that LGBT issues still face an uphill battle.

There's also the fact that the LGBT community, by its very definition, encompasses segments of other groups that have faced their own issues in society. Being Caucasian and gay is very different from being Latina and lesbian, or from being Southeast Asian and transgendered. The community has had to deal, in more than a few cases, not only with the external prejudices and resistance of the mainstream hetero Conservatism but with the prejudices within its ranks.

Mr. Kirchick's comments about his age say more about the naivete of the twentysomething than the liberation of the new generation. He certainly hasn't had to worry overmuch about being assaulted and then arrested on the street at midday; he hasn't been concerned about being knifed on his way home from a night out, then dismissed by the authorities as (as Kevin Spacey put it so succinctly in L.A. Confidential) "just another... homo-cide"; his being out at work wasn't the immediate and irretrievable end to his career; and the whole host of indignities foisted on his elders haven't really impacted his world all that much. But those indignities are less than a generation removed from the current debate, and have waxed and waned considerably over the last few decades as new voices of intolerance and narrow-mindedness have continued to surface and as Conservatism and Xtianity have continued to use the LGBT community as both punching bag and poster child for all that they consider wrong in society. LGBT people have been blamed by these groups for everything from youth delinquency rates, to the prevalence of divorce in society, to the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the disastrous hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 - and there is a measurable proportion of the population willing to accept those charges as valid. The National Organization for Marriage's otherwise laughable recent efforts are a clear indication that those sentiments persist. Claiming victory under those circumstances is premature at best.

His viewpoint - that the younger generations are more accepting, which will make the battles easier - also conveniently forgets two other things. First, the nation's leaders are of at least the age of most of those who survived the tumult of the HIV pandemic and the earlier SSM debates, and they will be part of the group shaping public policy for some time. Growing support for LGBT issues from their younger constituents will not change their rhetoric any more than the 19th Amendment automatically made women's voices in government unique and powerful. Also, the same youthful voices were heard in the 1960s denouncing war, greed and inequality: many of the generation we now know fondly as "flower children" became some of the most intolerant, greedy, militant people in our society, supporting the policies of those they had denounced so loudly in their youth. Assuming that the latest generation's perspective will remain constant on any issue is remarkably shortsighted.

I would view the LGBT movement's history, not in comparison with NOW (whose history has encompassed a relatively fixed set of ideals and goals under regular assault) but with NAACP (whose goals have evolved as the movement has made progress on the basic issues). The right to vote may never have been an issue for all, but safety of life and limb, freedom to associate and organise, and rights to employment, housing and equal medical care have all been under attack at some time or other and remain not entirely certain today.

If Mr. Kirchick thinks the battle is won, and that LGBT rights are essentially achieved and oppression has ended, I suggest he take a long stroll hand in hand with his SO down the streets of Odessa, TX, Bakersfield, CA, Pensacola, FL, Valdosta, GA, or any of a hundred other small Conservative towns and see just how far he gets.

War As A First Resort

Not that it's particularly surprising, but John "We Will Nuke You" Bolton thinks invading Somalia (with a new "Coalition of the Willing," no less) is a good idea.

Unless we go in and really end this problem once and for all, we will simply see it grow over time.

Maybe it's just me, but I recall this sort of rhetoric used before, and the resulting involvements didn't work out so well.

More Small Tent Politicking

Last week Andrew Sullivan put up this razor-sharp dissection of why the New Right - particularly the Fundie set - isn't interested in anything remotely LGBT-friendly.

National Review clearly believes that gays exist beyond the boundaries of civilized life, or even social life, let alone the purview of social policy. But, of course, a total absence of social policy is still a social policy.

...

As far as National Review is concerned, homosexuals can go to hell. Their interests and views cannot even be accorded respect. They are non-persons to National Review: means, not ends.

Flip this around and you see what the theocon right actually believes: that society has no interest in the welfare of its gay citizens, and an abiding interest in ensuring that they remain unequal, feel unequal and suffer the consequences of a culture where family and commitment and fidelity are non-existent.

Recently, the RNC Chairman himself has given yet more evidence that LGBT citizens - even LGBT citizens who are (mystifyingly) Republican - aren't of any importance.

Humph.

Green Or Not

Two recent stories highlight how difficult it is to promote responsible energy policy in the US.

The first is from the Los Angeles Times, describing how the hybrid car market more or less collapsed in the first quarter of 2009.

I'm curious why there is no mention of how the entire automobile market crashed at about the same time, that the hybrid market was hindered by dealer markup of perhaps $10,000 on the vehicles (the Prius I looked last year at had an MSRP of $24,000 and a sticker of $33,000), that the "hybrid" market includes such laughable examples as the Lexus RX400H and Cadillac Escalade Hybrid which aren't all that attractive economically in the first place, or that nobody's buying anything right now due at least in part to the fact that credit for autos is almost harder to find than a decent mortgage. According to the LAT, it's all about the price of gas, which admittedly has dropped from the $4/gal mark it hit in 08 and has only recently started climbing again.

On the other hand, this item from Washington Monthly gives one hope. It seems there's a growing market for solar power, centred in Gainesville, FL, and poised to be one of the next great growth industries. ECS Solar, one of the vendors listed in the article, has a fairly extensive Website, and lists that the local power utility has agreed to a Feed In Tariff of $0.32/kwh. A Feed In Tariff, as the Washington Monthly article states, is a premium paid to alternate energy producers that feed the utility's power grid, and is scaled to create an incentive for wind and solar projects.

I'm struck by the two entirely different flavors of the articles. On the one hand, what's essentially a household consumer durable good - the automobile - while experiencing the same catastrophic drop in demand as has all its peers (refrigerators, plasma TVs, etc), is treated as a special case just because "consumers refuse to pay a premium for a fuel-efficient vehicle now that the average price of a gallon of gasoline nationally has slipped below $2." On the other, we have major property owners - condo associations, businesses and apartment complexes - either ponying up wads of cash themselves or making sweetheart arrangements with solar proprietors to get panels on their roofs, because unlike the here-and-gone-again income tax credit for the hybrid car the FITs being touted are perhaps double the actual cost of the energy if those installing solar were to purchase it instead of producing it.

There's a great deal to be said for cost-effectiveness. It's true that for a hybrid vehicle to match the cost per mile values for its conventional counterpart it has to be kept and used for a substantial amount of time (something like five years or 75,000 or so miles). The up-front expenditure is substantial, and in the current market climate a working vehicle that is either owned outright or on manageable terms is considerably more attractive than the headaches and additional burdens of purchasing something newer and more fuel-efficient - assuming you're approved for the purchase at all. But if upfront costs were such a hurdle, then the solar industry would be in deep trouble.

I investigated a solar array for my building a year ago. We learned that our building could support a 1Mw array, but it would cost about $2.2 million to purchase and install. TECO, our electric provider, as of today does not offer a FIT, though it does buy back at retail rates and accepts inputs up to 2Mw (the previous limit was 25kw). One vendor offered to lease the equipment to us, taking our lease payments in terms of our electric consumption. Essentially, the building could lock in its electrical rate for the duration of the lease. So far, though, I cannot persuade the board to go further with this than additional study. However, each member I have spoken to has been intensely interested in the project: the hesitation comes from each's assumption that it will be difficult to persuade the others.

It boils down to costs, and to the understanding of costs incurred. The solar initiatives are gaining traction because they have a clear and measurable payback schedule; the hybrid car does not, and MPGs can be misleading. There is a growing respect for the Gallons Per Mile computation as a more accurate indicator of efficiency: you can read a fairly clear analysis here.

It also boils down to costs incurred by whom. Mid-sized industries (those large enough to own their own premises), housing complexes and the like are better placed to make large-scale leases or purchases of this sort than the average household. Indeed, the average household isn't in much of a position these days to lease or purchase anything not absolutely necessary.

The bottom line is that there remains a solid and growing market for energy-efficient and energy-alternate products. The trick is making them attractive - in any economic environment - for their respective consumers. It also helps if we can avoid bewailing how the US isn't interested in being efficient in a cheap-energy environment without considering other factors at all seriously.

Compassionate Conservatism At Work

If only this story were available nine years ago, we might have seen Compassionate Conservatism for the Big Lie it was.

The Bushes plan to install a permanent gate outside the cul-de-sac later this year.

Until then, some neighbors have decided to treat 10141 Daria Place as just another house in Preston Hollow, despite all indications otherwise. The day after the Bushes arrived, the local Cub Scout troop visited their cul-de-sac as part of its annual drive to collect canned food. The troop's supervising parent, Nancy Burke, drove over to Daria Place a few days in advance to ask the Secret Service for clearance.

Sorry, the agents said.

Burke stopped by twice more and received the same answer before finally winning approval from a scheduling aide in Bush's office. An hour before she took the boys to Bush's house, Burke met with them to discuss logistics. Only 30 people could enter the cul-de-sac. The Scouts, ages 7 to 11, needed to wear their full uniforms. A raffle determined which two children would receive Bush's cans. Burke taught them how to talk to the media: "Think about their question before you speak." She demonstrated how to shake a president's hand. "Look him in the eye and shake firmly." [emphasis added]

H/T to Mock Paper Scissors.

About The Healthcare Debate

The Atlantic has an interesting commentary on US healthcare, and why it's so expensive. The author(s) list(s) three reasons for the costs:

1) We pay more for our medical services. But though the pharma industry is important, the real action is in wages. Our medical personnel cost vastly more than their counterparts abroad in almost every category.

2) We consume more services. Americans get shiny new facilities--my British colleagues once derisively commented that American hospitals are "like hotels". American hospitals don't have open wards for almost anyone. They staff at very high levels. Doctors conduct an inordinate amount of tests. We use an expensive machine rather than watchful waiting. And often, those expensive machines catch conditions that never would have turned into anything, which we then treat. Natasha Richardson probably would have lived if she'd had an accident here, because doctors would have done a cat scan, and there would have been a Medevac helicopter available. That's tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a single life.

3) There are inefficiencies. I don't mean "compared to other systems"--every system has some screwed-up illogicality that costs it money and makes patients worse off. But compared to what we could have. For example, Medicare pays for procedures, not wellness, which means that there's a chronic undersupply of geriatricians, because the specialty isn't particularly well paid even though the nation's largest healthcare provider is specifically designed for old people. This is madness. But every real-world system that has attempted to pay physicians for wellness has ended up giving up in disgust.

I can't disagree with the reasoning within the scope of the argument, but I do think there are factors the article does not consider.

1) External cost factors are not considered. Part of the reason healthcare professionals earn more in the US than elsewhere is that, in comparable economies, there is a stronger social safety net which affords a shield against catastrophe to the worker and more comfortable retirement for those who reach that point. Without that, the uncertainty of living in the US demands of the healthcare professionals (as it does of us all) higher compensation in order to protect themrselves against the unforeseen while in the workforce and poverty once out of it. This in itself is not a bad thing; however, the increasing inability for public sources to keep pace with the costs of living makes that demand all the more imperative.

2) Healthcare professionals in the US face substantially higher insurance rates, particularly for malpractice coverage, than their peers in other industrialised nations. This is anecdotal to those not in the profession or in academia, since resources on specific rates is difficult to find. However, the evidence that is available is staggering: there are multiple reports like this one of physicians leaving the country to find more affordable coverage, for example. And two studies, one by Dartmouth College and one by the advocacy group Americans for Insurance Reform, indicate that premiums in the US have continued to skyrocket in spite of the fact that payouts have either remained constant or declined, and in spite of the fact that state after state has enacted so-called "tort reform" designed to make those premiums lower by reducing the payouts. A telling quote appears here:

"Going into 2007 you're going to see very aggressive pricing as these companies have boatloads of cash. They're going to go out and spend it. That spurs the cyclical market of 'we're back to competition,'" [Richard "Rick" W.] Mortimer [vice president of HealthCare Professionals' Insurance Services] said.

Yet instead of pricing more affordably, the carriers seem to have increased their rates instead. As recently as 2004, those increases were somewhere near 100% as this item shows.

3) The insurance market in the US is a for-profit sector, and those companies offering coverage are doing so to make money for themselves and their shareholders. This is not to say that private, for-profit insurance is a strictly US phenomenon; however, the remainder of the industrialised world relies on public programmes first and retains a for-profit sector as a niche market, while the US takes a nearly inverted approach. As both the AIR and Dartmouth studies indicate, the industry profits from premiums have improved dramatically of late. Both studies imply that the increased premiums are intended to offset bad investments by the companies.

Briefly: a private insurer essentially charges a fee to guarantee that a related loss by the covered will be honoured, and invests that fee speculatively to provide the means with which to honour a claim; as the investments intended to fund claims shrink, premiums should rise proportionally. This is both a strength and weakness of the private model: the private insurer is more likely to have the resources to honour a more substantial claims, but is vulnerable to the markets in which it invests and is more inclined to aggressive pricing than a public or non-profit alternative which would only seek to break even rather than show a profit - a profit that, in the recent Wall Street mindset, should not only remain stable but regularly and predictably increase.

The problems that arise from articles like the one in the Atlantic stem from analysis of the subject in a vacuum. Without the related factors, such as overall costs of living, retirement and safety net investments, and analysis not only of the healthcare industry's own behaviour but that of the individuals and industries that (presumably) serve that industry, and then of the motivations and impediments placed on them, the question cannot be accurately answered, or even truly effectively addressed. The Atlantic article highlights some very valid points about US healthcare - but it misses enough to make its argument far less than convincing overall.

Fox, Meet Hounds

From The Daily Dish, a British take on the news, with extra-special treatment of Fox. It's well worth watching - just make sure your coffee and your keyboard are well separated.

UPDATE: In case, after that, anyone needs to understand why the rest of the world has such a dim view of the US "news" machine in general, and Fox in particular, 'Liss at Shakesville has a concise example.

Alexandrian Bonfire Redux

Andrew Sullivan has a telling transcript from a Teabagging event:

Woman: [Shouts] “Burn the books!” [applause]
Man: “I don’t think you were serious about that, were you?”
Woman: “I am too.”
Man: “Burn all the books?!”
Woman: “The ones in college, those, those brainwashing books.”
Man: “[laughs] Brainwashing books?”
Woman: “Yes.”
Man: “Which ones are those?”
Woman: “Like, the evolution crap, and, yeah...”

Wow. Just like all those anti-knowledge folks were supposed to have done.

See Boatboy Blush

"C'mon Over, My Wife's Away" not only made it to The Reaction - it made the week's summary.

Aw, shucks, folks...

Hell Froze Over Last Week

Creative Loafing has two stories that made my head spin this morning.

Item one: the Hillsborough County Council is beginning work on a light rail system.

Item two: a reprint of an item - from Think Progress no less - about a CSPAN call-in show which featured a caller from Tampa busting CSPAN's chops for paying attention to failed Conservative policy points and continuing to emphasise Conservative speakers.

Who'd'a'thunkit: Tampa Bay's Rightward lean may finally be reversing.

On Faith, Sexuality, Privilege and Projection

The great argument between the Far Right Xtians and the LGBT community has heated up of late, as public bodies give more latitude to LGBT needs and less to Xtian dogma in the public sphere. The Xtians are increasingly crying that the recognition of LGBT issues is an infringement on their freedom of religion and an imposition on their way of life.

Much of the differences between these two camps springs from fundamental misunderstandings on each side of the other, and of projection of each side's perspective on the other's goals.

The LGBT community is largely a “live-and-let-live” group, disinterested in enforcing its own lifestyle and preferences on the rest of the population but concerned when society at large denies it basic human dignity. It is neither expansionist nor authoritarian, and seeks only the respect and consideration it feels all humans deserve.

The Xtian community is by definition a messianic, missionary community who sees its role as saviour of Humanity. Xtians hold themselves apart even from most other Christian sects, believing them misled or “straying” from the True Faith, and driven to correct this “mistake” at any cost. They seek to correct the failures in civil society, and hold high standards for personal conduct according to a very precise, specific code. That they do this for the benefit of all and for the eventual salvation of Humanity is relevant: their cause has merit in their eyes, and in the eyes of many outside their realm.

The problem arises from each side of this argument's unconscious projection of its goals and methodologies on the other. The Xtians are recruitment-based: their membership is either indoctrinated in their youth or converted from some other belief (or from lack of belief altogether), and their aim is to project their “True Discipline” globally. Any impediment to this approach is perceived by them as persecution. The LGBT community is a passively created group: there is no “recruitment” to sexual identity, though any who define themselves as non-hetero are de facto members of the group and are perceived as deserving of the same respect and ability to live their lives without oppression. They are, however, adamant about the intrusive nature of any group's efforts to “convert,” “change” or "save” them since they believe it unnecessary – whether through faith that their Creator built them the way they are or through faith or lack of it that does not admit such direct Divine involvement in their existence.

Take for example the same-sex marriage issue. Marriage has had many functions over the ages beyond basic procreation: political and business alliances have been made, status established, power consolidated or conferred, and governments augmented or replaced all through marriages. Polygamy and polyandry both have a long history, and are still accepted in multiple cultures; the binary “one man, one woman” approach to heterosexual marriage is but one variant on the practice. The concept of marrying for love is fairly new: the far older tale is of a marriage for some other purpose wherein love is afterward found. Shakespeare first bridged the gap, though the Romantic movement made a good deal more of the concept. For the LGBT this is a civil right, divorced from religious overtones as described as early as the Deist writings of the 18th Century and as promised in the Constitution. Xtians see marriage as a key component of their Code and Law, and dismiss other positions outright as the product of “false” or “misled” beliefs which must be opposed for the good both of their own (for their protection) and for those thus led astray (for their eventual salvation).

Take also the claims of the Xtians that the LGBT community “recruits” young people and seeks to “infiltrate” schools and youth organisations to bring new “members” into the group. Xtians, of course, use such methods to spread The Word, and expect this approach from their members as a natural facet of practicing The Faith. LGBT persons, in contrast, recognise only that sexuality begins to be exhibited at a fairly young age, and regardless of one's faith needs to be handled with care, love and respect: the idea of “recruitment” is ridiculous, since the determining factors are more biological and familial than doctrinaire, and since there is no goal inherent in LGBT identification to “convert” any but rather to uphold and support those who think and feel as they do. Recruitment is alien to LBGT life; it is not, however, to Xtianity. Thus, the Xtians see in LGBT teachers a conscious effort to “pervert” the young people in their care, while the LGBT community sees only professionals dedicated to the improvement of all young people with no agenda beyond educating the young.

Take also how each group deals with its leadership. LGBT groups run the gamut of liberal to conservative, Christian to Xtian to Jewish to Muslim to agnostic to atheist, and are judged according to their adherence to these from an LGBT perspective. Log Cabin Republicans, for example, are often denounced by Progressives for their willingness to accommodate those who oppose them (thus diminishing chances of achieving true equality for their LGBT constituents), but they are not ostracized, excluded from the community or otherwise shunned. It is, after all, their right to speak and act as they do, though their goals and methods can rightly be questioned. Xtian leadership, in contrast, is often held to strict standards dictated by Xtian Law; breach of this Law is often met with removal from positions of power (either forced or voluntary, though voluntary vacations of position are often attempts to save face and avoid impending removal), and though forgiveness is a key component of The Law's philosophy it is usually only granted after much penance. LGBT leadership is measured by results and by adherence to civil law and decency; Xtian leadership is measured by the stricter standard of Xtian Law, which in those circles takes precedence over the civil law it frequently seeks to supersede.

In each case, the conflict stems from fundamental misunderstanding of each group's aims and methods. The Xtians, themselves seeking to convert all to their True Faith and holding steadfast to a particular Code of Conduct, see in any other group (including LGBT) a like-minded philosophy and agenda, and see in those groups' activities signs of the other's diabolical assault on The Faithful. Opposition to other philosophies is not only right, but virtuous, and demanded by The Divine in order to save all Humanity. LGBT people, desiring only to be respected for themselves and seeking inhibitions on those who would constrain or outlaw their own lifestyle and seeking only respect and forbearance from those around them: belief is irrelevant to them in this context, and the only truth that obtains in context is that different people are prone to different inclinations and behaviours which, practiced as free adult citizens in a nation presumably devoted to personal liberties and rights, ought to be respected. The LGBT position is not morally relativist, but merely the recognition that a belief system cannot dictate more basic portions of an individual's makeup deserving of respect from civil society.

Herein lies the rub: Xtian philosophy considers its Law superior to that of the State. Further, the Xtian missionary bent encourages – if not demands – its adherents to implement its Law in the public sphere as an obligation of The Faith. Xtians tend to see other groups with different understanding of the place of civil government in the same light. The precedence civil law takes in a pluralist society is viewed as a failure both of society and of The Faith, since civil law is the work of the public and presumed to be without the Divine inspiration Xtian Law claims. Imposition of civil law on the Xtian Faithful is perceived as a diminution both of their rights and of their stated goals, as it dilutes the code by which the Faithful are expected to live.

In contrast, the LGBT community, being drawn from a larger philosophical circle, see the imposition of any Divinely-inspired law as an encroachment by those intent on remaking society according to that one philosophy's precepts, to the detriment of their rights as citizens. Opposition to such efforts is not based on the Rightness of their opposition, but on the Wrongness of imposing a single philosophy's narrow interpretation of its own code on a society that does not universally share that philosophy.
What makes this friction of perspective pertinent is that the US was founded as, and still remains, a civil government founded on pluralist philosophy. In circumstance after circumstance, civil law trumps the tenets of Faith with regard to LGBT issues. Four states now allow same sex marriage, all states now recognize same sex affiliations as legal and its practices immune from prosecution, and workplace and housing protection is broadening. The LGBT community – like most US citizens – perceive this as the natural evolution of civil society under the framework of the Constitution. The Xtians, however, recognizing no law above Their Own, and seeking to implement that (for the benefit of all in both this life and the next), perceive such changes not only as challenges to their own tenets but outright offenses against them. In their zeal to remake the US as the Xtian nation they desire, they see the imposition of common law in the public sphere as an affront to their beliefs, not conceiving that their certainty of Rightness is not shared nor could be persuasive to those who disagree. The requirements of accommodation in such circumstances is anathema to a philosophy that denies the primacy of the civil sphere and demands that such be superseded by Divinely-inspired legal code.

In the end, much of the friction is a function of the fundamental misunderstanding of each group by the other. The LGBT community does not see the separation of church and state in a civil forum as an impediment to Faith, and see attempts to legislate according to a particular faith an imposition on civil rights. The Xtians, seeing the same civil forum as subordinate to the Divine, and who seek conversion of all within it (for their own good), see any constraint on their efforts as restriction of religious practice as it interferes with one of their key religious principles.

PWNing 2 Million 4 Marriage

In my last post, I discussed the cluelessness and/or outright cynicism of an anti-marriage effort that labels itself 2M4M. Seems cluelessness was more appropriate after all.

From the website for the just-registered domain 2M4M.org:

It's surprising how quickly things can get started. Just this morning I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend and then the news hit about the 2M4M campaign that opponents of marriage rights were mounting. As many were scratching their heads at the choice of name, it occured to me that the obvious Internet presence, 2M4M.org was sitting unused.

Well, it is unused no longer. Welcome to 2M4M.org, or Two Men For Marriage. This site will present the facts about marriage equality as a counter to the fear, uncertainty and doubt being sown by the opponents of equal rights.

I first saw the site go up last night, and already there's a fairly thorough skeleton put up.

WOO-HOO!

This Goes Right Up There With Republican Twittering

Box Turtle Bulletin has unearthed another NOM item - one that illustrates just how out of touch these wingnuts are, or how cynical they must be.

Right on the heels of their much-mocked zombie ad sponsoring their Opus Dei buddy, NOM brings us their latest:

In just a few minutes, NOM President Maggie Gallagher and I will hold a press conference in Trenton, NJ, announcing an ambitious new nationwide “2 Million for Marriage” (2M4M) initiative.

C’mon. You’ve got to be kidding.

Surely her PR people are having a laugh at her expense. Can anyone really be in PR and not have at least done a quick google to see if your new acronym is going to engender giggles?

Although…. if I saw, “Hi, we’re 2M4M and we are against marriage”, it might make some weird sense.

Either these volk don't know the popular connotations of "M4M," or they're hoping to delude some uninformed LGBT and LGBT-supporting people into backing their bigoted cause. Either way this is just priceless.

What You Get For Your Law Enforcement Tax Dollar

First, comes the story of an ISP raided by the FBI - with, so far, no indication given as to cause or consequence (outside shutting down the provider's datacenter for the time being).

Second, there's an interesting article on how Utah is funding a programme to help its officers sweat out their crystal meth habits.

Third is an item on how two drunk sheriffs here in Tampa Bay who were let go after what would have been a DUI traffic stop.

And last is the tale of a Texas police chief who tasered his wife.

I have the greatest respect for law enforcement in general. But I've had less than pleasant encounters with them in the past, most notably an assault I witnessed in California where the PD arrested the victim instead of the assailant. So while I'm willing to give them the benefit of at least some doubt, these stories taken together tell a tale of presumed privilege and police-state practices that make one shudder. And while these are taken from a variety of US national sources, their relative immediacy - all in the last six months, and three of them in the last week - is alarming.

H/T Wolfrum.

How NOT To Win Friends And Influence People

PETA is becoming increasingly annoying.

Seems that dissing women and slagging anyone who's not a Vegan isn't enough anymore. Now they have to bother pop icons about their choice of names.

"Dear Neil and Chris,

"You have many loyal fans of the Pet Shop Boys here at PETA. We have a request that may at first seem bizarre, but we hope that after considering the following facts, you will understand why we are asking this of you: will you please consider changing your name from the Pet Shop Boys to the Rescue Shelter Boys?"

Never mind that Pet Shop Boys have been using that name for over twenty years, and have some associations from their beginnings that have meaning and value (Wikipedia says it's about friends of theirs that worked in a pet shop, though I've heard other stories). Never mind that the name is now a known brand. Never mind that any pop band that reinvents itself with a new name essentially has to start over. And never mind that PETA is as old as the Pet Shop Boys, and could have said something decades ago, so the timing of this one is just wrong. Somehow these ethicists-cum-publicity-junkies have the losing idea that making noise about something that's been part of the popular culture for more years than I like to count now, after all this time, is somehow productive.

To their credit, Pet Shop Boys have put up a polite but firm reply to the PETA demand on their Website. I've read it: it's the nicest "go to hell" response I've encountered in a while. Good for them.

I'd like to think that, after this latest exhibition of exquisitely poor taste and timing, PETA might actually do something that doesn't involve grandstanding or valuing animals over people. Given their history, though, I fully expect them to live down to their recent history.

H/T Petulant at Shakesville.

Welcome to Port Royal, Mr. Smith*

It seems some Texans have issues with "foreign-sounding" names.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

There's a lot of noise on this item about The Entitlement, The WASPishness and The Ignorance associated with Ms. Brown's perspective. I think it goes deeper than that.

The problem Brown sees, though, seems to me less culturally significant and more intellectually lazy. It's not merely the Hsus and Chens and Huangs that are affected, but a far larger swath of the population with names more complex than one syllable or six characters. Ms. Brown merely adds a cultural and racial component to this laziness.

The problem Ms. Brown seems to see is the difficulty with the "foreign-ness" of the names. This, coming from someone obviously part of that "nation of immigrants" the US keeps touting as a badge of honour, whose people have been here at most four hundred years themselves (most likely much less), is galling until one recalls how each particular wave of immigration has been viewed by each preceding one. The Irish and Italian immigrants were despised by their English, French, German and Spanish hosts; the Poles, Czechs and Slavs despised by the Irish and Italians who preceded them; and so on. In each case, for each wave, there are countless stories of immigrants whose "unpronouncable" names were replaced with something like "Smith" or "Jones" by immigration officials who were unable or unwilling to attempt to sort out the names the immigrants gave them on entry.

There is, of course, a certain Othering at work in Ms. Brown's statements: Chinese immigrants would, by her logic, do so much better if they were only more like us. The presumption, however, that abandoning one's name (a supremely personal item) is appropriate to becoming part of the culture is something I find personally offensive - particularly since my own name, which should be far less difficult, is no less frequently butchered by the same sorts making claims like hers.

I have a very, VERY English name. My last name is of Norman origin (my people arrived in England with William I), and can be traced back to 10th century Normandy. My first is equally English, and fairly recognizable. However, for whatever reason no-one in the US seems to get it right, either in pronunciation or spelling. Correcting people has become almost second nature. And all this for a name Ms. Brown's logic would skip due to its origins.

I suspect that there are many like myself, whose names while not everyday are certainly recognizable as of a familiar origin, yet who face the same sort of troubles that Ms. Brown seems to have with Asians. Adding a racist tone to the sort of change Ms. Brown suggests layers on a new level of offensiveness, but the larger issue - that the US has a long and storied history of such resistance to every group of more recent arrivals, and has been equally unkind to them all - is an example more of long-practiced intellectual laziness than the bias implied in her single statement.

* from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

On Educating People Who Don't Want To Think

Two recent stories circling the 'blogosphere achieved synchronicity in my mind this morning.

The first is the brouhaha over the "Gathering Storm" ad campaign from National Organization for Marriage. Petulant at Shakesville eviscerated the ad, but there have been others who have torn it apart - sometimes with hilarity. Much of the criticism of the campaign - the part that actually checks the campaign's "facts" rather than simply denounce the outright bigotry or question why the campaign had to hire actors rather than produce the actual people cited - tears into the hyperbole and outright falsehood of the claims. Unfortunately, it takes research skills to actually identify the "oppressed" produced in the ad, since the ad doesn't name names or give the slightest specific for its test cases.

The second is a disturbing report on the uninformed nature of the US electorate. A recent study for the California Academy of Sciences highlights the relative ignorance of the populace on basic scientific knowledge. Relating to this, Space Cowboy (again at Shakesville) retells an anecdote from Southern California that, due to budget constraints, science education may actually be reduced.

There is something in the US psyche that encourages certainty. The US doesn't like ambiguity: it prefers the conviction of fact or belief. As a result, the complexity of the modern world is often suppressed in the public sphere and replaced with platitudes and simplistic statements which are frequently incorrect in part or in whole simply to assuage public angst. It is possible for an authority on a given subject to make an assertion that is demonstrably false and have it accepted simply from the certainty with which it is delivered.

Part of the CAA survey results can be explained by the pervasiveness of "young earth" philosophy in Conservative Xtianity. If, for example, one believes the Earth is 6,000 years old, then man and dinosaur would naturally exist at the same time - which would explain the 59% correct response rate for that question. The rest of the questions, however, point to an almost wilful ignorance of established science.

At the same time, the education system is increasingly focused on what policy defines as "essentials" - basic reading and mathematics. Such a narrow approach, dealing in essentially right/wrong dichotomies of calculation and syntax, while easily scored for evaluation, completely ignores the "gray area" fields of the social sciences and more complex natural sciences (chemistry, physics and biology), all of which are essential to a sound education.

I cannot posit a causality for the decreasing literacy in the US from these items. But the "Gathering Storm" campaign shines a bright spotlight on both the mindset that encourages it and the results of allowing that mindset to dictate education policy and public discourse. The more narrowly the US focuses its efforts to educate the populace, the more necessary disciplines become ignored, particularly disciplines where right and wrong are displaced by provable versus unprovable and where interpretation based on the observable becomes more integral to the subject. Equally, as the disciplines that do not encourage right/wrong dichotomies in their studied material are diminished in the education system, the notion that there are such absolutes in the natural world becomes more prevalent and acceptable.

A cultural artifact of the deemphasis on such modes of thinking is the increase in acceptance of unproven - even brazenly indefensible - positions making their way through public discourse. The "Gathering Storm" campaign is one such.

The problem with such phenomena in the scholastically challenged world of 21st century US culture is that debunking such patterns of thought require the kind of critical thinking that the US education system is increasingly unable to teach and that the US populace is seemingly increasingly disinclined to practice. Given this trend, the capacity of education to encourage critical thinking in any sense is diminished, and this decrease may be attributable in no small part to the disinclination of the public to think for itself.

Education is at once an obligation of any society and the specific privilege of the individual. Society, particularly democratic society, needs an informed populace to remain productive and functional. However, the level of education obtained is largely the choice of the individual citizen: how much or how little education an individual obtains is that individual's own option. These two conditions are largely at odds in modern US society and leave us with results such as are illustrated here.

The same society that values science in the abstract is woefully uneducated on scientific specifics as the CAA study shows, which implies that many more advanced disciplines of less perceived value are at least equally outside the grasp of those surveyed. At the same time, those disciplines, whose spheres encompass the realms of what is provable or defensible, are being held increasinly out of reach by an education system apparently unable or unwilling to present more than the absolutely but hardly exclusive essentials of basic arithmetic and everyday language. In turn, there is a predominance of public speech on increasingly complex subjects that is oversimplified to a point that it becomes substantially inaccurate, which is absorbed as accurate by a public increasinly discouraged from, and disinclined to, its own critical thinking and research.

The net result of these convergences is a populace uninformed on matters of vital import to the republic and the planet, who are unable or unwilling to expend the effort to explore beneath the surface of complex issues and sufficiently complacent with their condition to accept baldly inaccurate positions based solely on the conviction with which they are made. This might be curable with a more comprehensive approach to education, and a more rigorous and expansive curriculum at both the elementary and secondary levels, but again as indicated in the current discourse the US education system is in such dire economic straits and in such low domestic repute that the very coursework that could alleviate the problem is being sacrificed to the immediate budgetary constraints without apparent thought for the long-term consequences.

Yet Another Reason The Right Hates Rail Transit

Because too many of their supporters misstake the railroad facilities for FEMA concentration camps for Conservatives.

Sighting

Today's special sighting is of the container ship Maersk Alabama, recently attacked by Somali pirates as it was bringing relief supplies to drought-stricken Kenya. Recent reports indicate that the crew has retaken the ship, though none of the reports are definitive.

H/T Steve Benen.

"you like me, right now, you like me!"

It seems I'm getting read, and that's leading to getting published elsewhere.

The Reaction has invited me to post there occasionally, and I've accepted. My first post went up last week, and the second is submitted and awaiting approval. Have a look.

FYI the title for this post is Sally Field's actual remark on winning the Oscar for Places in the Heart.

UPDATE: I've just been informed that "C’mon Over, My Wife’s Away" will be in tomorrow's The Reaction posts.

THANKS FOLKS!

C’mon Over, My Wife’s Away

There's been a lot of noise about the recent events in Iowa and Vermont, particularly from the Chicken Little School of Conservative Thinking. Steve Benen, Shakesville, BBWW, Box Turtle Bulletin and others have all covered it rather nicely.

It occurs to me, though, that there's a reason for the marriage issue is so big for the RWNM that's not being discussed all that much.

Living in SW Florida, I run into all sorts. One of the types I try to avoid is the "married but playful" kind: the ones that are stepping out on their spouses to indulge their preferences on the down-low. It's messy for them, it's uncomfortable for me and it's dishonest on both parts to carry on anything more than a one-night stand under those conditions. Quite frankly, I won't knowingly have anything to do with it. However, the number of folks I meet who do or will is startling.

The RWNM has long presented civil rights issues as a zero-sum game: more for you is less for me. The idea of an expanding set of civil rights - indeed, of rights in any sense - seems alien to them. They did this with civil rights based on race and sex, and they've done it more than a few times based on sexual identity.

In the SSM case, my hypothesis is this: many of the naysayers are acquainted with more than a few married couples who aren't straight, and legalisation of SSM would drive them to divorce their spouses and marry their partners.

This is offensive on a number of levels. I'll hit the chief ones that bother me: feel free to add your own in comments.

First, their position assumes that there are a lot of couples who married for convenience, respectability, and tax and insurance benefits. This perspective reduces those marriages to pure business contract: there's nothing "sacred" about getting married just to be added to your spouse's health insurance or to file joint tax returns. If SSM is legalised, these marriages will be shown up for the transactional relationships they are, and the arguments about the "sanctity of marriage" will instantly evaporate.

Second, the assumption that there are substantial numbers of couples who married for convenience and respectability undermines the arguments about "special rights" for a "small minority." There is an unstated assumption in the position that the actual number of people who would self-identify as LGBT if SSM were legalised is substantially higher than is either reflected in accepted sociological statistics or claimed by the naysayers - perhaps as high as 30-40%. The RWNM doesn't want to be seen as hostile to proportions that high - just look with the GOP has done to court the Hispanic vote in recent years - so numbers like that can't be allowed to see the light of day. So long as they can talk about a small number of "deviants" rather than a substantial minority of law-abiding LGBT citizens they can continue to whinge about the "special" and "excessive" demands of those LGBT citizens willing to make noise on behalf of the rest. If the numbers they fear become public, prior statements denouncing the LGBT movement as a tiny fringe of society seeking preferential treatment will be meaningless.

Third, the naysayers are expecting legalisation of SSM to produce an immediate uptick in the divorce rate as all those marriages of convenience adjust. Their assumption seems to be that this will be an immediate phenomenon. Again, they are failing to take into account that divorce is a messy business not undertaken lightly, that many of the marriages they think are jeopardised by the new laws are prone to dissolution not just because the new alternative is available, and that said marriages are taken so lightly that they are at risk in the first place. This puts yet another torpedo into the "sacred institution" meme simply because it implies that marriage is so fragile that it won't withstand expansion.

Fourth, there is the unspoken awareness that marriages of convenience are loveless, unhappy things foisted on these people in the name of respectability and social harmony. The numbers the anti-SSM voices fear, should they manifest, would spotlight their commitment to a cruel, oppressive social policy that demanded those in MOCs live lies just to be accepted. It might even be enough to cause a resounding backlash, and it would certainly encourage opposition to their other platform planks. The idea that marrying the person one prefers to have sex with produces happiness is no more true than marrying a person one prefers not to have sex with produces unhappiness: however, these people apparently fail to recognize that point.

Searching through my memory, I can recall perhaps three couples I have known who tied the knot for legal benefit, social respectability or camouflage for non-hetero behaviour. That's three (maybe) out of some hundreds of married people. I have, however, met many who cling to this "sanctity of marriage" argument - all the while indulging in extramarital recreations (and sometimes more serious involvements) and keeping it quiet. LGBT personal ads and Website profiles that demand "discretion" abound in the South and particularly in SW FL, which term I am learning is codespeak for "I'm hitched and playing on the side, but I don't want my spouse/employer/church to find out." I hardly think these same people would run to the courts to annul those marriages simply because they don't have to stay in them to claim the attendant legal or financial benefits. There may be a readjustment of sorts over time, but there won't be crowds beating down the divorce courts' doors the moment these laws are signed.

This, though, seems to be the likely calamity the anti-SSM lobbies fear: that all those people they know personally who are in some marriage of some sort of convenience would immediately ditch their present arrangements and swap them for the SSM they really desire. Should that happen, all the RWNM's rants about the Sanctity of the Institution of Marriage, the Needs of Teh Childern, the Special Rights Teh Gay Demands and other such memes would suddenly and forcefully ring hollow as all those people their positions drove to these MOCs were allowed to choose a more desirable legal alternative.

H/T to Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof for the title.

About That Ugly GOP Budget Projection

I've been reading the various posts by several eloquent individuals who have thoroughly and effectively dissected the GOP “budget” documents. Doing so, I noticed that there is something in the data that everyone else has missed.

The GOP graph that has spawned so much ridicule shows a radical increase in federal share of GDP starting about 2030. The GOP is claiming that this upswing is a consequence of current Democratic fiscal policy. However, the upswing is two full decades out. If this were a consequence of the current administration's policies, one would expect this upswing to occur much earlier. It does not.

This tells me one thing:

Barack Obama isn't the problem.

Not Obama. Not Pelosi, nor Frank, nor Dodd, nor any of the other Democratic figures currently in power. Obama's term will end no later than January 2017, so unless the numbers are an indirect way for the GOP to assert Obama will seek to repeal the 22nd Amendment and pull an Hugo Chavez so he can play the next FDR, then Obama will not be president for more than a decade before the increase hits. The others will likely all have retired some time before the moment when this upswing occurs, so they're out, too.

So the GOP isn't all that scared of our current administration, or its policies, or its current allies. But they are deathly afraid of something.

I see four possible causes for this.

1) Somewhere there's a handful of twenty- or thirty-something Democrats that scare the pogees out of the GOP. Who these people are, where they are, and what they've done to deserve this almost irrational fear I cannot say. But the President and Congress elected in 2028 clearly deserve the lion's share of the blame for the uptick, and whoever the GOP thinks these people will be are the chief culprits. Given recent history, I'm inclined to look at the disillusioned among the veterans of the GWoT and the Iraqulous War, who are through with GOP talking points and ready for Something Completely Different.

2) The graph includes the assumption that there will be a GOP successor to Obama, who will screw up the economy so badly that the electorate will welcome Democratic proposals unconditionally, and whose legacy will require the kind of expenditure indicated. Given how thoroughly ShrubCo cooked the federal goose in eight years, this is a very real potential if the GOP continue to pursue the same policies they have for the last fifteen years. This also assumes that the GOP understands that its policies are designed to fail, which torpedoes their own arguments just as it explains their projections.

3) The increases, as Conor Clarke points out here, may be related to increases in spending on Social Security and (especially) Medicare and Medicaid. This is at once admission of the failure of private medicine, assumption that both programmes will continue unchanged, which is unlikely given that the demands on both programmes are largely driven by skyrocketing healthcare costs already under close scrutiny – and a blatant case of elder bashing, since the problem clearly comes from all those old folks living so long.

4) Since the graph indicates percentage of GDP, not absolute dollars spent, the GOP is predicting a total private-sector collapse in two decades. Since their current financial model is one of minimal public investment, this assumption would describe the total halt of private industry as the continually-neglected domestic infrastructure collapses. In the resultant environment, the economy would require not merely repair to but complete replacement of domestic infrastructure: roads, power transmission, water, sewer and other systems will not only need repair and expansion, but outright replacement. Replacement is a lot more expensive than simple repair. It would also require public expenditure to replace private investment, which would no longer be possible if the entire economy crashes. Again, this points to GOP budgetary constraints, and the continuing neglect of public resources fostered by the party's ideology, far more than Democratic proposals to reinvigorate the economy and maintain the public sphere.

Of the four, the first seems to me the most hopeful scenario. Each of the others implies some sort of hardship for the nation, and half the options imply that hardship is a direct consequence of GOP fiscal and domestic policies.

In any event, the graph itself gives the lie to their own rhetoric. Obama's policies by themselves are not the problem: if they were, the increase would occur far earlier. The GOP is afraid of something else. Whether it's a SuperDemocrat entering office, or their own misdeeds coming back to haunt them, or some other factor, is unclear. What is clear is that it's not the next eight years that bothers them most.

Cross-posted at The Reaction.

A.W.O.L

I've been away from this for a while. Mostly I've been beating the pavement looking for work: the job market isn't what it used to be, and this area has been hit rather hard. I'm still looking, and still interviewing, but so far nothing.

I've also been unable to say anything much about the recent set of stories currently in the news and 'blogosphere that hasn't been said better elsewhere.

I'll try to keep more up to date.

And Here I Was Worried About Falling Parking Structures*

... while Southwest Airlines was skipping its safety checks.

The airline has agreed to a $7,500,000.00 fine for neglecting proper safety inspections - about a quarter less than the FAA had originally assessed in penalties.

The airline was fined for flying 46 airplanes on 59,791 flights without performing mandatory inspections for fuselage cracks. The planes, mostly Boeing 737s, carried an estimated 145,000 passengers.

Federal investigations revealed that FAA's cozy regulatory climate with airlines led to the suppression of whistle-blower complaints against Southwest. Once uncovered, the complaints led to stepped-up inspection efforts of all carriers' maintenance records and hundreds of planes being grounded in early 2008.

The settlement agreement also requires Southwest to pay an additional $7.5 million if it does not accomplish 13 safety-related steps, including:

_Increasing by eight the number of on-site technical representatives the airline has at companies that perform major maintenance on its airplanes.

_Allowing FAA inspectors improved access to information used for tracking maintenance and engineering activities.

The full story is here.

And for those of you that dismiss the fine and settlement as excessive caution, there's this, and this, and this, and this.

* see my earlier post "Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go to the Airport"

A Case Of SSAD*

I suppose it was only a matter of time before not liking being watched became some psychological condition.

Colin Gant, 41, of Lowestoft, who drives more than 500 miles a week in his job, was forced to take detours to avoid the detection devices.

He then approached Norfolk Safety Camera Partnership for help.

...

[Inspector Marcus] Rowe added: "It's recognised that if you drive past a fixed site camera the average person will probably check their speed to make sure they are doing the appropriate speed.

"Colin's reaction went beyond that and he felt anxiety and stress."

The surveillance society that the postindustrial West is fast becoming is affecting our daily lives more than any of us would like or would care to admit. David Kravets reviewed the situation not two months ago for Wired, and wasn't particularly impressed with what it found.

If you think you're being watched, you're probably right.

The American Civil Liberties Union posted a website Monday showing that government-financed surveillance cameras are running rampant across the United States.

The situation is such that even publications like Popular Mechanics, not especially attuned to civil liberties, has taken notice.

What bothers me is that, while the BBC story is the first article I have seen where the aversion to one's every action being monitored has been treated as a problem for the individual and not society, it likely not the last. As more cameras and surveillance equipment enter our public spaces, the likelihood that such "anxiety" will increase is substantial.

* SSAD, or "Surveillance Society Anxiety Disorder," is not a genuine psychological condition. However, it is a rational extrapolation of the mindset behind the writing in the BBC article, and an actual clinical diagnosis based on this premise (and likely given a very similar name) is only waiting to be applied.

Confusing Size With Quality

Girlfriend: But it's so big and impressive.

Salesman: Size means very little. Bigger isn't necessarily better. I sound like Dr Ruth.*

Automakers around the globe are feeling the current economic pinch. We've already heard Detroit's Big Three bleat pitifully to Congress that they need help now or they're out of business. It seems for at least one of them, the problem isn't just here in the US.

German carmaker Opel is in talks with the country's economy minister about a 3.3bn-euro (£2.93bn; $4.16bn) cash injection from the government.

Also:

Carmaker Saab... has had its application to enter a reorganisation process approved by a Swedish court.

An administrator has been appointed to handle the process. Saab is seeking to create a fully independent business.

Opel has been a GM marque for many years. Saab was acquired in the 90s. Both have felt the recent pinch - and GM's apparent unwillingness to invest in a quality smaller car.

This brings me back to the quote that started this article.

I attended the auto show in Lakeland last weekend. Two things struck me very powerfully. First was the predominance in US-made cars: I recall one Morris; a pair of Rolls-Royces; a handful of little roadsters from Jaguar, Austin Healey, Triumph and MG; one pre-Ford Volvo; one pre-GM Saab; and one marvelous little three-wheeled BMW. That was about it for the imports. The second thing was size: until the 1950s or so, the higher end cars were all nearly double the size of their more affordable relatives, and all the US cars were substantially bigger than their international counterparts.

The "bigger is better" approach to US automaking has no doubt contributed to our current crisis. Bigger, less efficient, more expensive vehicles have been Detroit's measure for "quality" for many years, and the smaller more efficient vehicles have been treated like red-headed stepchildren by both design and production sides of the house. This fixation on the bigger-is-better model has had some unfortunate side effects, not least of which have occurred in the international arms of the Big Three:

Sales at Saab in 2008 were down 25% on the previous year.

The Swedish carmaker has not made a profit since 2001. In 2007 it made an operating loss of 2.19bn Swedish crowns ($248m; £175m), according to regulatory filings.

It estimates its losses in 2008 at around 3bn Swedish crowns and expects a similar loss this year, filings also revealed.

Stephen Pope, chief global strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald, believes GM "oversaw the destruction of the Swedish car company's soul".

"Just look at the current '93' [model] as an example," he said. "The '93' is just a Saab body skin placed on top of the Vectra from Opel/Vauxhall."[emphasis added]

Anyone who remembers the disasters that were the 1982 Cadillac Cimarron or the 1986 Pontiac LeMans knows that Detroit's thinking on small cars is woefully lacking. The prevailing wisdom of taking outdated designs and putting them in party frocks doesn't sell if the vehicle under all the glitz isn't up to the task of providing long-term reliable transportation. And dressing up a cheap car still leaves the car with the failures of its origins and build quality. One of the reasons BMW, Volvo, Honda and others have been so successful in the US market is that, regardless of the size of the vehicle produced, the product was a quality item better built and more durable than its domestic counterparts; this is a concept that Detroit seems to have yet to truly comprehend either at home or abroad, as the quote from the Saab article clearly demonstrates.

Opel is unlikely to suffer very long. The company is a major European powerhouse building respectable if unalluring vehicles. The Saab situation may be more complex, and again part of the problem is GM:

We've also heard faint buzz about a new entry-level Saab car, smaller and less expensive than the 9-3. This would be sold mainly in Europe, to broaden the brand's market coverage there, but it might also come to North America for the same reason--if GM decides to build it. That's by no means certain. The model was first rumored during 2006, but hasn't yet been approved as far as we know. Even so, industry gossips say it could materialize fairly quickly, perhaps as a 2010 Saab 9-1.

...

Assuming GM gives the green light, the 2010 Saab 9-1 may be based on the latest German-designed Opel Corsa. Typical of such spinoffs, the Corsa would be adapted to incorporate Saab "brand values." That means Saab-specific styling, a more-upscale interior, more standard and optional conveniences, and sportier suspension tuning. All this would help justify a likely price point somewhat upstream of the Opel Corsa. But the price can't be too rich, as most American car buyers still equate small with cheap. [emphasis added]

Again we have the cause-effect conundrum. After generations of Detroit design efforts that seemed incapable of producing anything smaller than an Abrams tank that was worth driving, public opinion of small cars is low. Demand falls with opinion, and smaller cars sell for progressively less. But equating small and cheap, particularly after the successes of the Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, BMW 318, Mini and others, is a difficult proposition and only really works when one discusses small US-originated vehicles. That goes right back to Detroit's continuing inability to perceive quality in the product and its insistence on building "higher-end" vehicles on (frequently outdated) entry-level platforms.

The problem is particularly vexing when one thinks of the generations of driver from Yuppie onward, who created the demand for the smaller upscale vehicle like the BMW, Honda Accord and others - including Saab. These people saw value in the construction, efficiency and reliability these cars offered, and appreciated the extras and image that came with the branding. GM seems to have understood the latter without giving thought to the former, and now it's paying for that oversight in lost prestige and profits.

* from Ruthless People.