A feminist Jew, a wise Latina woman, and a Harvard Law dean walk into a bar... Thirty years ago, that would have been the opening of what would now be seen as a politically incorrect joke, the bar a place to drink rather than an entry into the practice of law. The idea of having a woman on the Supreme Court was posited as a political strategy by presidential candidate Ronald Reagan's key campaign advisor, Stuart Spencer, in response to late campaign tightening in the polls. After a bitter convention battle between feminists and non-feminists, Republicans had dropped their 40-year support of the Equal Rights Amendment. They were in danger of losing the women's vote in a year when, after six decades of voting in lower numbers, women would come out to vote in numbers equal to men -- the first year in which there would be a significant gender gap in voting, with men overwhelmingly supporting Reagan while women split more evenly.
To fulfill his campaign pledge, President Reagan nominated a relatively unknown Arizona state judge to be his first appointment to the Supreme Court on July 7, 1981. "My nomination was a great surprise to the nation, but an even greater surprise to me," Sandra Day O'Connor has said. She looked not all that different than the typical woman of the time: she wore rose-colored dresses and lavender suits -- with skirts rather than pants, often with a scarf or pearls at her throat. "When I first ran for state legislature," she has said, "it was simply a matter of political reality that, in order to get elected, a woman had to appear and act 'feminine.' People gave up their traditional notions only grudgingly."
She'd graduated Order of the Coif at Stanford but been offered only a job as a legal secretary at California law firms. She spent five years on what would become "the mommy track" when her sons were young; she'd lost her babysitter and couldn't work miracles. When Ken Starr came to her home to interview her for the Court appointment, she served a lunch of salmon mousse salad she'd prepared before he arrived.
Somehow, it's hard to imagine Justices Roberts or Alito or Thomas fixing salmon mousse in preparation for being appointed to the Court. Somehow it's hard to imagine the first woman nominee might have gained the appointment to the Court if she had not.
O'Connor seemed at first blush the kind of person anyone might overlook at the time: an attractive woman who would not make anyone nervous. But she would not be overlooked. In response to an editorial in the New York Times referencing "nine old men" of the Court and using the POTUS/SCOTUS monikers for the President and the Supreme Court that became popularized on "West Wing," she set the paper straight in a letter that displayed her disarming wit:
According to the information available to me, and which I had assumed was generally available, for over two years now SCOTUS has not consisted of nine men. If you have any contradictory information, I would be grateful if you would forward it as I am sure the POTUS, the SCOTUS and the undersigned (the FWOTSC) would be most interested in seeing it.
FWOTSC. First Woman on the Supreme Court.
It's hard to take offense when you are laughing. Not impossible, but a challenge at least.
With her first major decision, in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, she began the process of changing the law of gender discrimination. When then lower-court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg brought the opinion home to show her husband, his response was "Did you write this?" Justice O'Connor became the swing vote on the issue of abortion, allowing a narrowing of Roe v. Wade but refusing to overturn it. "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life," she wrote. She was the swing vote in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, finding discrimination had been "a substantial factor" in a decision not to promote a woman to partnership. She was the deciding vote in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, allowing a whistle blower standing to sue for retaliation in gender discrimination circumstances, and in Davis v. Monroe, allowing a girl who'd been subject to relentless sexual taunts by a classmate to sue the school for allowing the hostile environment to go unchecked.
Would the law be different had a man been appointed in her place? The weight of the voting record of other Republican appointees to the Court since 1981 suggests it well might be.
In her first year as Justice, O'Connor received over 60,000 letters, more than any other justice in history. Some were admittedly hostile, one addressed to "Mrs. John O'Connor" urging her to turn down the appointment as unbefitting "a wife and mother who respects the psychological components of a family" and another beginning "Back to your kitchen and home female! This is a job for a man and only he can make the rough decisions." But many came from women and girls writing about what her appointment meant. When O'Connor began law school in 1950, few women had served on any kind of court, but today women comprise 26% of state judges and 22% of the federal courts -- numbers that are too low, but still higher than they have ever been. In 1979, just two years before Justice O'Connor's appointment, only three women had ever served full Senate terms, all of whom had first gained public office either by appointment or through election to fill vacancies left by their husbands; now 17 women fill Senate seats, with two states -- California and Maine -- being represented solely by women. Justice O'Connor's law school class included only a handful of women, and many of the top law schools simply did not admit women; today women law students outnumber men. Role models matter. Opportunities matter. Changes in the law matter.
A feminist Jew, a wise Latina woman, and a Harvard Law dean... In the joke it's always three. On the Court, we might look to a future when prominent news sources talk about the nine wise old women who will seem as probable as those nine old men did for the first 190 years of the Court.
After the media tsunami surrounding the Casey Anthony trial and verdict, 'analysts' have come forward stating that the most reviled mother since Faye Dunaway in "Mommie Dearest" could reap nearly seven figures for a book deal. I think that's a crock.
Many people have pointed to other controversial celebrities who wrote successful books. O.J. Simpson. Amy Fisher. Even reality stars like the Kardashians and Snooki. But the fact is that in every one of those instances, the celebrity had a modicum of sympathy. O.J. Simpson was a Hall-of-Fame running back, an icon for decades, and he had a fair share of supporters both during and after the trial, especially since the case seemed to be divided along racial lines. With reality stars, as much as it pains me to admit, people actually 'like' the Kardashians and Snooki. Amy Fisher is a tougher one to understand--my feelings are twofold: her book was published 12 years after she shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco, and as a 17-year old her book was about coming to terms with the horrific act. Additionally, the man she was having an affair with, Joe Buttafuoco, was seen by many as the primary antagonist in the case.
Add to this the incredible amount of publicity attention this case has already received. No doubt that if Casey released a book Nancy Grace would unleash the blonde highlights from hell upon her, but the media moves fast, as does the public's attention. Next year is an election year. And unless a book comes out in the next six months, people will have moved on. They will mourn Caylee, and care even less for Casey. On Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz took the media to task for 'merchandising tragedy' during the Anthony trial. While that cannot be changed, I think there would be public anger if, once again, the press seemed to drop everything to cover Casey Anthony yet again, given all the hugely important issues that will shape the nation over the coming 18 months.
Regardless, the fact is that there exists 'zero' sympathy right now for Casey Anthony. None. Yes, there is absolutely a morbid curiosity around her. I have no doubt a television special (which could be watched for free) would draw huge ratings. As would a magazine interview, which could be bought for $3.99 or, more likely, read online for free. There are some who feel that the prosecution did not meet the burden of proof required to convict Casey Anthony, but that is a far cry from convincing people to stand in line at a bookstore for her autograph.
In order to sell books, there needs to be a protagonist. There needs to be a figure readers can cheer for, relate to in some way. O.J. Simpson's controversial book If I Did It was a major bestseller because it allegedly was the closest the acquitted man ever came to a true confession. It was catharsis for many. I find it exceedingly hard to believe that, if Casey did kill Caylee, she would confess to it in a book. Yet if that were to happen, no publisher would want to face a incredible public outcry similar to what HarperCollins received upon the announcement of Simpson's If I Did It, which led to a rare public apology from Rupert Murdoch--whose NewsCorp owns HarperCollins--and the firing of Judith Regan, one of the most commercially successful publishers ever. It is conceivable a small, rogue publisher could pick up a Casey Anthony book (similar to when Beaufort Books took If I Did It after Harper dropped it), but if that's the case the financial windfall would barely be a fraction of what these analysts predict.
The notion of a Casey Anthony book is simply more water being squeezed from that stone, the media trying to drain out a last few columns and angles before the well dries up and we move on. Speculation is catnip, and because a few 'analysts' have declared Casey likely to reap a mind, people will feast upon it. But the analysts are wrong. From a supply and demand perspective, there may be a whole lot that Casey Anthony will be offering in the coming months, but I highly doubt there will be any demand for a book.
Jason Pinter is the bestselling author of five thriller novels (the most recent of which are The Fury and The Darkness), as well as the ebook exclusive thriller FAKING LIFE, which have nearly 1.5 million copies in print in over a dozen languages. His first novel for young readers, Zeke Bartholomew: Superspy!, will be released in November 2011. Visit him at www.jasonpinter.com or follow him on Twitter.
Now that we know who "allegedly" did the actual killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who then ordered the hit job? Was it Hezbollah -- the Iranian-backed terrorist organization's whose chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah despised Hariri and his Sunni compatriots? Syria's President Bashar al Assad, or one of his family members? The Iranian President or the Ayatollah... all of the above?
Let's recall that in February, 2005, the prime minister was killed along with six bodyguards and 16 innocent Lebanese pedestrians when Hariri's car was blown up by a huge bomb along Beirut's beachfront corniche. Originally, suspicion fell on Syria's Assad as the man behind the trigger man. After all, Hariri had dared to defy the Syrians by orchestrating efforts to reduce Syria's unwelcomed meddling in Lebanon, and in return, Hariri had been threatened repeatedly by Assad, according to independent media accounts.
This was no contract killing by rogue elements of Hezbollah. When the names leaked from the so-called sealed indictments issued by the special UN Tribunal investigating the hit job, it was the worst kept secret in the Middle East that senior Hezbollah leaders were going to be fingered. Although until a few days ago the actual perpetrators' names remained sequestered.
The indictments named Moustapha Badreddine, and Salim Ayyash -- each of whom held senior officer positions in Nasrallah's secret Hezbollah military intelligence unit. Badreddine is a Hezbollah deputy military commander and brother-in-law of the late Hezbollah master terrorist and murderer of Americans Imad Mughniyeh. The other two named culprits: Hassan Anaissy and Assad Sabra have as yet uncorroborated affiliations with any organization.
Well, let's dispose of the easy stuff first. Given the vagaries of Hezbollah, there is little doubt that Nasrallah himself directly ordered the assassination. For a man who denies culpability for any role Hezbollah may have played in the murder plot, Nasrallah has devoted the better part of the past six years trying to deflect guilt away from himself or Hezbollah by sabotaging the UN Tribunal. Like a broken record, Nasrallah has denounced anyone or anything associated with it, masterfully orchestrating a deceitful propaganda campaign against the tribunal in order to shield himself from the International Criminal Court.
It is inconceivable that Nasrallah would not have been privy to the plot given the fact that two of his faithful senior lieutenants have now been indicted after a painstaking, exhaustive and IMPARTIAL investigation. To think otherwise is to believe that Nasrallah is not the master of his entire shadowy Hezbollah domain... an absurd proposition given his absolute dictatorial power Nasrallah wields over Hezbollah. His methods to subvert justice have included threats, intimidation, and blackmail. Not normally the conduct of an innocent bystander crying foul at an internationally recognized judicial inquiry under the direct supervision of the United Nations.
The details of the plot remain under seal, but surely will leak out once the arrest warrants are issued by the Lebanese government prosecutors -- not a sure bet given the internal political crisis the long-awaited indictments provoked in Lebanon.
Would Nasrallah have acted alone? Unlikely.
Here is where the plot thickens.
Just after the indictments were handed down, the former head of the UN Tribunal Detlev Mehlis from Germany broke his silence and declared that Syria's embattled President Assad ordered and approved the plot, although Mehlis did not substantiate his assertion with any evidence. Why would a distinguished jurist with access to the investigation files make this assertion at the time the indictments were handed down against the actual perpetrators? Probably because he knows a lot more than we know about Assad's likely role.
Moreover, subsequent information that has leaked out since then reveals that Syrian Interior Minister General Ghazi Kana'an -- Assad's enforcer in Lebanon, mysteriously committed suicide in October, 2005 (probably with someone holding the gun to his head) because the UN Tribunal was onto the fact that Kana'an and Nasrallah conspired to execute Assad's orders.
Which gets to Syria's role in the conspiracy -- let alone the consequences to Lebanon of the dragnet closing in on Hezbollah.
By any corroborated account, Assad had real motive to get rid of Hariri. Hariri was a real thorn in Syria's side. Hariri not only had an independent power base and a lot of money, but was also close to the Saudis, who reviled Assad and his Shi'ia Alouite minority regime. According to several sources, Assad knew that the Saudis were funneling secret money and arms to Hariri's Lebanese Army to thwart Hezbollah's ascendancy and checkmate Iran's increasing meddling in Lebanon -- all of which were anathema to Assad.
Will there be further indictments by the UN implicating anyone inside Assad's close-knit cabal? Hard to tell? But surely the Obama administration must know more than it is letting on about the indictments and Syria's probable role in the plot itself given the link between Ghazi Kana'an, his untimely "suicide" and Hezbollah.
The potential role that Assad may have directly played in Hariri's assassination is obviously being overshadowed by the revolt against his regime now taking place throughout Syria. But it points to the true nature of the Assad regime.
When coupled together with Assad's murderous rampage against his own people it provokes even more head scratching over the dubious behavior behind the Obama administration's attitude toward Assad.
On July 1, for the umpteenth time Secretary of State Clinton looped around again a tiresome refrain that the Syrian government is "running out of time." And that she was "just hurt by recent reports of continuing violence. Really? How hurt? Over 1,800 Syrians have been murdered by the Assad regime since March according to independent human rights organizations.
This is a rare moment in Mrs. Clinton's otherwise commendable stewardship of America's foreign policy where her credibility is fast eroding since her position on Syria defies logic and reason. It has raised troublesome questions by many in the Middle East who cannot fathom what is driving her to stay soft on Assad. Yes, comparatively soft given the atrocities he has committed against his own people over 5 months. Yet, paradoxically, Mrs. Clinton has shown no reluctance whatsoever to pile on other Middle East dictators who don't even merit an international criminal court investigation.
For good measure, this past Sunday National Security Advisor Donilon stepped right out onto breaking ice in a failed attempt to differentiate President Obama's lightning speed call for Mubarak to go against the President's refusal to do the same against Assad.
No one in the Obama administration has offered a logical explanation for this tongue-twisting policy -- either on record or on background. Either it is genuinely fearful that should Assad go Syria with break out into Iraqi-style civil war (a view widely discredited by knowledgeable Syrian observers) or the Saudis have threatened the White House not to toss Assad under the bus for fear that Iran and Hezbollah will further benefit from the upheaval (hard to figure how that could happen). Or maybe there is some other possibly credible explanation that remains cloistered? If so, the White House needs to better explain itself.
If all crooked roads lead to Assad, what is the better policy than that being served up by the Obama administration?
First, if anyone inside the administration needed further proof, Assad cannot crush the protesters with brute force -- witness the peaceful demonstration in Hama over the weekend which brought out over 100,000 Syrians into the streets there. That means it's about time to toss out the door the administration's increasingly shopworn view that Assad will prevail through the point of a gun in the long run.
Second, it's time to choke off Syria's oil exports by which it is earning desperately needed foreign currency to finance its crackdown. Syria is a net oil exporter and the U.S. has simply not done enough to contain its exports by jawboning Syria's customers.
Third, perhaps there are other ways to deal with Assad rather than succumbing to possible Saudi dictats without tossing Assad under the bus. Today, Amnesty International declared that Assad is engaged in crimes against humanity and that he and his regime should be referred to the International Criminal Court for atrocities against its own people. The allegations set forth by Amnesty include the use of torture, murder, mass detentions, and the firing on families fleeing over the border into Turkey. Amnesty's report pains a gruesome portrait of the Assad regime's rampage against anyone remotely associated with the protest movement.
In the face of these substantiated facts, the United States cannot in good conscience keep to its "sanctions and, oh by the way you still have time to reform" Syrian policy. Amnesty's report has now called into sharp relief the administration's folly of "Assad-lite" wishful thinking. In the face encirclement by human rights monitors and the UN's Tribunal, it really has no viable alternative left but to get behind European efforts to hold Assad accountable for human rights violations, and worse.
Fourth, the White House should do much more than it has to date to publicly and more forcefully support the increasingly well-organized and well-intentioned Syrian political protest movement and its leadership that recently met in Damascus. The protest movement has quietly constructed a well formulated reform "roadmap" that his quietly circulating among attendees which would slowly but surely ease Assad out of power via a peaceful transition. The meeting and the document is the best evidence to date that despite the violence throughout Syria there are courageous and credible opposition leaders who are easily identifiable and accessible to American officials -- unlike the early days of the Libyan revolt.
The Obama administration is having a hard time finding any more sand to place its head in when it comes to evolving events in Syria. It's time to reconcile policy and values -- something the president promised to do in his speech to the Arab people a few weeks ago.
When you attend a wedding at church, what passages of Scripture do you expect to hear? Congregations occasionally invite me to speak on the current same-sex marriage debates, and I ask them this question. Their answers are remarkably consistent.
Someone invariably mentions 1 Corinthians 13, the famous "Love Chapter." Love is patient, love is kind, love never insists on its own way and so forth. Wonderful advice for marriage, but Paul was not talking about marriage. He was addressing a church fight: the believers in Corinth had split into factions and were competing for prestige and influence. We see echoes of this conflict throughout the letter, but especially in chapters 12 and 14, which surround this passage.
Others call out, "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16; NRSV). Another moving passage, but it's certainly not about marriage. Ruth addresses this moving speech to her mother-in-law Naomi.
The second creation story in Genesis comes up: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genisis 2:24). This passage is certainly appropriate to marriage, as it reflects the level of intimacy and commitment that distinguishes marriage from other relationships. Jesus quotes this passage, too, but he isn't exactly discussing marriage. Instead, his topic is divorce (Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8). When ministers read the Gospel passages at weddings, as they often do, the message seems a little off. I'd rather not hear about divorce at a wedding.
One other passage frequently surfaces in weddings but rarely in mainline Protestant churches, the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodists and United Church of Christ congregations that invite me to speak. Ephesians 5:22-33 commands wives to obey their husbands and husbands to love their wives. Conservative Christians may try to explain away the offense of this passage, but there's no escaping its ugly reality. Ephesians calls wives to submit to their husbands just as children must obey their parents and slaves must obey their masters. See the larger context, Ephesians 5:21-6:9.
Not a Lot to Say
The point is, Christian weddings rarely feature passages that directly relate to marriage. Only one passage, Genesis 2:24, seems especially relevant, while other passages require us to bend their content to our desire to hear a good word about marriage. Things are so bad that the worship books for many denominations turn to John 2:11, where Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding feast, to claim that Jesus blessed marriage. My church, the United Church of Christ, has developed a new wedding liturgy, but it retains this common formula: "As this couple give themselves to each other today, we remember that at Cana in Galilee our Savior Jesus Christ made the wedding feast a sign of God's reign of love."
So we know Jesus blessed marriage because he attended a wedding? That's the best we can do? No wonder it's common for couples to struggle over the choice of Scripture for their wedding ceremonies. The Bible just doesn't have much to say on the topic.
Let's Be Honest
Unfortunately, many Christians use the Bible to support their own prejudices and bigotry. They talk about "biblical family values" as if the Bible had a clear message on marriage and sexuality. Let's be clear: There's no such thing as "biblical family values" because the Bible does not speak to the topic clearly and consistently.
It's high time people came clean about how we use the Bible. When Christians try to resolve difficult ethical and theological matters, they typically appeal to the Gospels and Paul's letters as keys to the question. But what about marriage? Not only did Jesus choose not to marry, he encouraged his disciples to abandon household and domestic concerns in order to follow him (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:28-30; Luke 9:57-62). He even refers to those "who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:10-13). Whatever that means, it's certainly not an endorsement of marriage. Paul likewise encourages male believers: "Do not seek a wife" (1 Corinthians 7:27, my translation) -- advice Paul took for himself. If neither Jesus nor Paul preferred marriage for their followers, why do some Christians maintain that the Bible enshrines 19th-century Victorian family values?
Let's not even go into some of the Bible's most chilling teachings regarding marriage, such as how a man's obligation to keep a new wife who displeases him on the wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:13-21), his obligation to marry a woman he has raped (Deuteronomy 22:28-30) or the unquestioned right of heroes like Abraham to exploit their slaves sexually. I wonder: Have the "biblical family values advocates" actually read their Bibles?
Christians will always turn to the Bible for guidance -- and we should. If the Bible does not promote a clear or redemptive teaching about slavery, that doesn't mean we have nothing to learn from Scripture about the topic. The same values that guide all our relationships apply to marriage: unselfish concern for the other; honesty, integrity and fidelity; and sacrificial -- but not victimized -- love. That's a high standard, far higher than a morality determined by anachronistic and restrictive rules that largely reflect our cultural biases. Rules make up the lowest common denominator for morality. Love, as Paul said, never finds an end.
Whenever I watch Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann give an interview, I get a queasy feeling. My queasiness is not a result of Ms. Bachmann's far-right policy positions, or her tendency to make erroneous statements, or her penchant to rewrite -- and sometimes make up -- American history. The queasiness does not come from my appreciation of Ms. Bachmann's personal biography, which she frequently mentions at her campaign events. She does, after all, have a respectable professional history. In addition, she has raised five children and 23 teenaged foster children. Although I disagree vehemently with Representative Bachmann's politics, I have respect for people -- like her -- who have devoted so much of their time and energy to raising foster children.
So why do I get that queasy feeling when I watch a Michele Bachmann interview? It comes from observing her eyes. They seem transfixed, distant and almost other worldly as if there is some kind of disconnect between her being and her body. Some people might suggest the distant eyes reflect Bachmann's intense concentration. Despite some tough questions on Face the Nation or Meet the Press, she does seem to stay on message. Like most politicians she rarely, if ever, acknowledges a mistake. That means she'll spin tortuous narratives, as she did recently in claiming that John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father, to reinforce the image of someone who stands her ground. Bachmann's capacity to stay on message has served her well. She has raised lots of campaign money and has challenged Mitt Romney for front-runner status among the Republican candidates for the GOP presidential nomination.
My queasiness comes from the medium side of Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase "the medium is the message." For anthropologists like me the term, "medium," not only refers to one or another aspect of mass media, but also to practice of spirit possession. In spirit possession, the body of a person, the medium, is taken over by an external force that takes control of the medium's body. This external force does two things: it shapes the medium's movements, which become highly stylized, and it contours the medium's message, which follows a standard cultural script. Throughout field research in West Africa, I had the privilege of witnessing more than 100 spirit possession ceremonies in the western region of the Republic of Niger. These events featured a great deal of ceremonial drama -- brilliant staging, colorful costumes, show-stopping acrobatics and mind-bending fire handling -- all to showcase mediums and their cultural messages. In my experience, I found it fascinating and unsettling to observe a possessed spirit medium's eyes. They were invariably transfixed, distant and other worldly as if there were some kind of disconnect between the medium and her or his body.
I am by no means suggesting that Michele Bachmann is a spirit medium. But her carefully crafted political behavior bears some striking similarities to the behavior of spirit mediums. Like other Republican presidential candidates, personalities, and office holders, Bachmann seems to be possessed by rigid ideology -- the neoliberal belief that the market is God-like and will solve all of our problems, the idea that taxes should never be raised and that government spending cuts will bring us great prosperity, the idea that it's no big deal for the Federal Government to default on its debt, the idea that a person can have a "calling" to high public office.
You can't negotiate with a possessed spirit medium, who is incapable of independent thought. The same might be said of the blind faith absolute positions that Republican legislators and presidential candidates have taken on deficit relief, taxation, the ubiquitous power of the market, and the very public role of religion -- and faith -- in political life. Such absolutism means that candidates like Michele Bachmann, not to forget Republican leaders in the House and Senate, sometimes look at us with distant eyes and speak to us formulaic snippets. In short, they have become political mediums. In their interviews there is little evidence of any sense of creativity or the capacity to reason beyond narrowly conceived dogma. What has happened to their individuality? Where are the people living in those bodies? Do they know the meaning of Reason?
Such formulaic messaging, in fact, defies any sense of Reason, the key concept of the Enlightenment, the 18th philosophical movement constructed to free human society from the unreasoned tyrannies of religion. The thinkers of the Enlightenment believed that a "more perfect union" was a society founded upon the principles of Reason, the dispassionate deliberations of free thinkers who had the capacity to compromise. Our Founding Fathers, who are ironically lionized by the likes of Bachmann, were Enlightenment thinkers. They believed in the powerful force of Reason to create that "more perfect union." The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are based upon Enlightenment principles. What's more, the Founders stressed the need for separation of church and state and for checks and balances in the structure of government because they feared the tyranny that can be brought on by the spread of unreason and by the dangers of dogmatism.
Mediumship works well in traditional religious practices like spirit possession, but its absolutism is inconsistent with democracy, which cannot function without reasoned debate and compromise. If Republican leaders begin to act more like public servants and less like non-thinking fundamentalist soldiers, we might begin to repair our political system. If not, their absolutism will plunge us into unspeakable economic darkness. In less than two weeks, we'll know if millions of us will needlessly suffer because of their blind faith in a reality that does not exist.
Yesterday's surprising verdict was, simply put, a supremely emotional consumer purchase decision. Though a potential death sentence was at stake, the process by which jurors acted as purchasers followed well-established patterns of perception. Jurors listened, drew conclusions and eliminated unpleasant realities that interrupted their existing belief structures in the same way that consumers hear product arguments -- or political arguments -- and toss out the inconvenient, or painful.
To continue the metaphor, the prosecution lost because they acted like product managers, PowerPoint logic in tow. The product manager says, "Buy our widget for all these rational reasons" and the state argued, "Buy our argument for all these rational reasons."
But the defense understood that the case rested on the strength and believability of the Casey Anthony brand -- a brand that the media had been trashing for years before the trial began. Even though she never took the stand, the case rested on whether or not the jury believed she was capable of the horrific murder of which she stood accused. So while the state tried to connect the dots, the defense knew that they had to overcome the viscerally toxic aspects of her behavior by creating an emotional scaffold for jurors to grab onto, a neural framework for re-branding her, for thinking of Casey Anthony in a way that would allow them to resist the prosecution's logical appeals.
The defense knew that the music mattered as much, if not more than, the words.
Here are three branding strategies that the defense successfully leveraged:
• Create positive associations that link to deeply seated emotional networks.
The defense showed a lot of footage of Caylee to convince the jury that Casey was a good mother. It worked. Images are depth charges that function on an unconscious level. Those videos branded Casey brilliantly, connecting her with existing, powerful imprints of mothering. After all, bad mothers don't care enough about their children to memorialize every detail of their lives. That footage normalized her, made her relatable.
The more this footage was shown -- by either side -- the better it was for Casey. And the harder it was for the jury to shut off the neural networks that linked her to the imprint of a loving mother. And, in turn, the easier it was for the jury to accept the defense's arguments -- and to dismiss the hard-partying image the prosecution sought to create.
It's the Casey Anthony version of Johnnie Cochrane's "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." If the defendant's behavior doesn't fit what you see of them, you must acquit. Behavioral psychologists call in the confirmation bias.
• It's a bad time for authority figures. Take advantage of it.
Even though the official syntax is "The People Versus Casey Anthony," jurors can see it as the all-powerful government at war against an individual. And if you read any of the polls, you'll see that Americans are increasingly skeptical of what their government has to say to them, and I believe that translates down to prosecutors -- particularly arrogant ones who laugh and smirk during closing arguments. Because there is such a built-in mistrust of the government, the slightest weakness or flaw in the prosecution's case -- and there was no shortage of them -- becomes magnified.
When Jose Baez, in his summation, said that the government was using "checkbook prosecution" he was tapping into the meme of big, bad government. The government lies and isn't to be trusted in its way -- and Casey Anthony made up imaginary characters and lied in her way. It's a draw.
• It's a good time for accepting the inexplicable.
Terrorists hijack planes and blow up the World Trade Center. The biggest, and allegedly the smartest banks in America created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and nearly bankrupted themselves. Black swans -- the highly improbable -- are everywhere. That's the Casey Anthony brand narrative that the defense sold: The truth can co-exist with a defiance of logic.
The absence of any forensic evidence linking Casey Anthony to the murder gave the jury something to hang their existential doubts on; despite the densely patterned wallpaper of lies she told about one imaginary friend after the other, the mother didn't kill the child. The times in which we live created room for the jury to develop a level of comfort with what, outside the courtroom, appeared to be a totally absurd narrative.
There will be no shortage of theories proffered about this case, but unlike the O.J. judgment, where the arguments revolved around color lines, the Casey Anthony decision is more complex. Beyond the prosecution's tactical mistakes -- and the argument that they should have gone for a lesser charge is a good one -- is the fact that there were two brands fighting for the sale.
On one side was the brand of motherhood. That's a damn strong brand, even when that motherhood waits a month to report her daughter's disappearance, and feels no compunction about pole dancing and getting a tattoo in this frightening period of uncertainty.
On the other side was the brand of power and authority, a brand with unlimited resources, a brand that is trusted less and less every day.
We know the outcome.
Which leads to the question: What kind of brand are you selling?
As a follow up to the Harrison Ford interview, I sat down with Steven Spielberg, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, three of the producers of Cowboys & Aliens, at the offices of Imagine Entertainment. I can't tell you how cool and enlightening it was to have access to this wealth of talent and experience. Every meeting or editing room visit predictably evolved into a first hand history lesson in Hollywood. I tried to capture a sense of what these conversations were like. In these interviews we touch upon subjects like Jaws, the Oklahoma Land Rush, sneaking onto the studio lot and John Ford's advice to a young Spielberg.
It is interesting to note that this is the first time that Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard have collaborated on a project in this capacity. They have been friends for many years but I got the sense that they really enjoyed the opportunity to actually collaborate on a film and I was grateful to be part of that experience.
With this in mind, I present to you the second installment of the Cowboys & Aliens interviews.
The Strauss-Kahn case is not about winning or losing, but opening a dialogue on rape, violence and gender.
The events unfolding in the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF accused of sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid, are both surprising and surprisingly not surprising. The New York Times first reported claims that there were serious problems with the prosecution relating to the credibility of Strauss-Kahn's accuser, who is originally from Guinea.
On Friday allies of the one-time French presidential hopeful welcomed this speculation, expressing hope for his swift return to the political scene. But the collapse of this case is not the worst thing that could happen: that would be for us all to retreat into our corners, to retrench our polarised positions. What is important is what we learn from this global episode, and what dialogue it leads us to.
This is a stream of the questions running in my head all morning.
How do you fight a rape case if you have lied in your past? How do you fight a rape case if you have been sexually active? How do you fight a rape case as a woman who wants a future in journalism, politics, banking, international affairs? How do you fight a rape case and ever hope to be taken seriously again or be perceived as anything other than a raped victim?
How do you fight a rape case as a woman in places like Congo where there are no real courts and no one is held accountable? How do you fight a rape case as an illegal immigrant with no rights in that country?
How do you fight a rape case if you still believe rape is your fault, if you don't even know what rape is, if you are afraid of upsetting your boyfriend/husband, or afraid of getting him in trouble because he will be more violent to you?
How do we get men to stop raping lesbians or independent or highly sexual women as a "corrective act" rather than addressing the forces and powers they are truly angry at? How do we get men to understand the impact of rape: how the external bruises are internalised and remain for ever?
How do you speak out against rape and not be called a man hater, a gold digger, a slut? How do you convince women to speak out when their character is called into public question?
How do you speak out against incest or childhood sexual abuse if your mother is sleeping with the man who is abusing you, and you know she loves that man or will not believe you?
How do you speak out against the adored, handsome, powerful, charming company president/caring psychotherapist/honoured history professor/visionary film director when you risk being despised by those around him? How do you speak out against the charismatic leader of the party or country when to do so jeopardises the standing of the party, the country itself, and could let the opposition take power?
How do you press charges for sexual harassment and not worry about losing your job, or being seen as weak or unable to protect yourself or hang with the guys and "take a joke".
When do we stop separating how we treat women from our vision of a free, equal, just world - ie how do you call yourself a socialist, an intellectual, a leader, a freedom fighter, an anti-apartheid, anti-racism, pro-earth champion, and not make honouring women a central part of that equation?
How do we create a real dialogue between men and woman about violence: what it does, how it hurts? How do we stop saying that women who are opposed to violence hate sex? When do we stop seeing them as the same thing?
The DSK scandal has rocked the world: it has brought into question issues of sex, power, race, class and gender. It is not simply a matter of winning or losing this particular case. The stakes are much higher. This case is a defining moment, a signifier of the direction we move in - towards transformation or more abuse and loss.
This post originally appeared in The Guardian on Friday, July 1st and has been republished in many publications around the world.
After returning from Facebook headquarters to hear Mark Zuckerberg make his "awesome" announcement, I had a chance to try out the new Facebook video chat which is powered by Skype. The service lets you establish a call with anyone who is currently a Facebook friend. You can't chat with non-friends and you can't chat with Skype users who aren't using Facebook. Also new is a "buddy list" window on the right side of the monitor, assuming your monitor is big enough. You might not see it if you're using a notebook PC.
Starting the process
The process begins with setting up a text chat with someone which you can now do by clicking on that person's name in the sidebar (assuming you have a large enough monitor). Once you're in the chat window, click on the video camera in the top blue bar.
You will see a message telling you that you're waiting for the person to answer.
The person who you calling will see a message asking them to accept that call.
And once the call is connected, you'll see the person in the main window and yourself in a small window in the upper left of the screen.
When you're done, click the X in the upper right corner to close the window and end the call.
In the wake of celebrating our national independence, it is time to make the American Dream true for more Americans. Congress should pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which would provide important and needed protections against workplace discrimination based on a person's real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. This Congress claims to be focused on jobs, and this legislation would protect those who have jobs or are applying for jobs against unfair, unreasonable, and irrational discrimination in the workplace.
These legal protections only exist in 13 states and the District of Columbia (an additional eight states have policies that include sexual orientation, but not gender identity). That means millions of people are judged not on the quality of their work but on characteristics irrelevant to their job performance. Far too many Americans live in fear of losing their current employment, being harassed on the job, or being bypassed for promotions simply because they are gay or transgender.
Indeed, we know that people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, face widespread discrimination and harassment in the workplace. Studies show that anywhere from 15 percent to 43 percent of LGB people experience some form of discrimination and harassment on the job. Further, 8 percent to 17 percent of LGB workers report being passed over for a job or fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Ten percent to 28 percent received a negative performance evaluation or were passed over for a promotion because they were LGB. And 7 percent to 41 percent of LGB workers encountered harassment, abuse, or anti-LGB vandalism on the job.
Rates of discrimination and harassment are much higher for transgender individuals. An astonishing 90 percent of transgender people report some form of harassment or mistreatment on the job. Nearly half of transgender people also report an adverse job outcome because of their gender identity. This includes being passed over for a job (44 percent), getting fired (26 percent), and being denied a promotion (23 percent).
But aside from the statistics, there are human stories. In my capacity as the bishop of New Hampshire, I know and have worked with a number of people who lost jobs because they lacked full employment protections under the law, and who as a result live in constant fear that they and their families will lose their economic security due to discrimination.
Gerri Cannon, who lives in my state, is a transgender woman I've gotten to know well. She was previously employed as a carpenter but in the recent economic recession trained to be a truck driver.
She is surrounded by a work environment that is largely hostile to the fact that she once lived her life as a man but now finds a fulfilling life as the woman she was created to be. She lives in fear--not only of the violence so prevalent against transgender people (the murder rate for transgender people is astronomically high), but also the constant threat of losing her job because of her gender identity.
Gerri is a thriving, productive member of society, faithfully contributing to the economic vitality of our state. Yet she must always live with fear and the threat of losing the means of supporting herself. That is not right.
The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are filled with admonitions that we will be judged by the way we treat our most vulnerable members. For Christians and Jews, God is described as having a special concern for the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable. We are morally bound to take special care to protect those who are so marginalized. I believe that in our time, it is gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people who are the marginalized deserving of civil protections. Surely, in this great nation, we can at least do that much.
And in this great nation, numerous states have stepped in to provide gay and transgender Americans a patchwork of employment protections they rightly deserve. Our country's leading companies also understand that a competitive, stable, and productive workforce depends on these kinds of protections. Of the Fortune 500 companies, 87 percent have nondiscrimination protections for sexual orientation, and about half for gender identity. The percentages are even higher for Fortune 100 companies.
Still, millions of Americans are left with zero protections under the law from senseless workplace discrimination. What is needed is a comprehensive law that provides uniform employment protections to all Americans: ENDA.
It is time for people of faith (and others) to speak up loudly in support of ENDA. It costs us nothing financially, and it protects those who already have jobs and prevents them from joining the rolls of the unemployed seeking assistance. It is hard to imagine why that would be a bad thing. Not to mention that the vast majority of Americans support these common-sense steps to eliminating workplace discrimination.
Fighting to advance protections for a discriminated against minority is one of the roles of a civilized society. In the name of a constitution that promises equal and fair treatment of all our citizens, ENDA would make the American dream of a job, free from unfair discrimination, a reality for all our citizens.
Bishop Robinson is the Ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire and a visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C.
Like the 104th Congress when Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, the House today is swinging a sledgehammer at a cornerstone of contemporary American democracy and undermining the most extraordinary body of environmental law in the world.
Chief among the attacks is HR 2018, known as the "Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011." The bill, currently working its way through the House, hogties the federal government's role in administering the federal Clean Water Act and gives states a veto power over a host of critical water quality decisions that the Clean Water Act currently authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to make. This approach will foster a 1950s-style race to bottom as shortsighted and self-interested state politicians dismantle their clean water laws in order to recruit filthy polluters.
Corporate polluters -- through massive campaign donations and relentless fear-mongering -- can easily dominate the state political landscapes. Their indentured servants in Congress -- many flying the Tea Party banner -- are working to disrupt the existing balance between state control and federal oversight in our environmental laws by returning us to the days of limited federal supervision -- a time when local government was on the side of polluters in a partnership that was stealing people's livelihoods, their recreation, their health, safety, property values and their childhoods.
The original drafters of the Clean Water Act were keenly aware of the problems inherent in leaving all responsibility to the states. Prior to 1972, that scheme had ignited rivers and firestorms and left Lake Erie declared dead. We saw the results first hand here on the Hudson River in the 1960s -- where hundreds of fishermen lost their jobs because their beloved waterways had become too polluted to allow anyone to safely eat the fish. The Clean Water Act, enacted shortly thereafter, created a beautifully simple yet powerfully effective tool to help address these problems: a federal safety net for water quality that guarantees a minimum level of protection to all Americans, no matter where you live. And for nearly 40 years this approach has been working.
Indeed, the Clean Water Act is one of our most important environmental laws, and it is a model -- both in the U.S. and abroad -- for achieving a sensible balance between state officials' familiarity with local conditions and the important role the federal government plays in protecting all citizens from a race-to-the-bottom by polluters and politicians intent on short term gain at the expense of local communities and long-term prosperity.
Having this shared authority is essential because state agencies face intense pressure to ignore the Clean Water Act in favor of the most powerful corporate interests. It is no coincidence that many of the bill's sponsors are from states where EPA has used its authority under the Act in recent years to make sure minimum levels of protection are achieved, such as West Virginia and Florida.
Unfortunately, HR 2018 rewards states for their past failures and rolls back the clock nationally by promoting an agenda that benefits only those who seek to pollute our waterways -- not the communities that depend on them.
Representative Tim Bishop of New York, to his credit, offered an amendment in committee that would have protected water bodies that serve as drinking water supplies, flooding buffers, recreation destinations and habitat for fish and game prized by anglers and hunters from these sweeping rollbacks. But sponsors of the bill would have none of it -- further revealing their disinterest in the protection of the American public from the threats of water pollution.
Poll after poll shows the public's support for clean water. The American people didn't stand for these congressional attacks to our environmental laws in the mid-1990's. And we must not stand for them today.
Despite the (perhaps) sudden uptick of young Jewish personal essayists, summer camp memoirists and opinion writers voicing disillusion with Israel, I registered surprise by how quietly the five-year anniversary of Gilad Shalit's abduction passed. It seems that those apostates who are outraged -- and rightly so -- at the state of affairs in the Jewish State no longer have space for the causes that first seduced them into loving such a complicated country.
I confess, I am part of the blasé generation that deems nearly everything with its roots in confrontation to be boring or unworthy of my time. I know we are killing you Baby Boomers, one eye roll at a time, but the largesse bestowed upon us has done its numbing, entitling number. And then there is Israel. In the midst of all this impassive irony, I still see Israel, somehow, as the vehicle for the aspirations of the Jewish people, both young and old. I also believe if one looks assiduously beyond the trouble Israel seems bent on making for itself, he or she will still find the kernel of Jewish vitality its founders intended.
Before I get carried away, allow me to say that I, too, am extremely displeased with the Israeli government headed up by Mr. Netanyahu. Its arrogant expansion of settlements undermines and dispirits Israel's allies and supporters and its obstinate voice is not the force I want prevailing in the battle for the Jewish imagination. I am displeased, but I understand it.
Prior to Shalit's abduction in 2006, Israel had garnered the most goodwill in years; the dust following the Second Intifada had seemingly settled and Israel had boldly uprooted its presence in Gaza, rightly removing settlements and even reburying the dead in Israel proper. The result of disengagement from Gaza was the kidnap of Shalit as well as a seemingly endless fusillade of rockets by Hamas upon a civilian population in Israel.
A few weeks later, Hezbollah, operating out of southern Lebanon -- an area abandoned by Israel in 2000 -- sparked a war by killing Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid and then firing thousands of rockets without aim upon the north of Israel. In Haifa, I saw a Hezbollah missile crash into a mixed neighborhood of Arabs and Jews; by the Israeli account, nearly half of the war's casualties in Israel were Arabs.
Israel's response in Lebanon and Gaza that year, as well as in Gaza again in 2009, caused unspeakable damage and loss of life. From our Western perch, it is difficult to grasp not only the complexity of asymmetrical warfare, but to stomach the maddening realities of its destruction. What is simple to get is that the territorial withdrawals by Israel from Gaza and southern Lebanon, given for the sake of peace, only led to more war. As the Iranian nuclear program continues to add to the mix the specter of Armageddon, it is no surprise to me that Israelis hardened their hearts and voted in such an obdurate leadership.
For decades now, poor and short-sighted leadership has been a hallmark of every country and party ever involved in this conflict. This is why it never ends. But as we're seeing across the Middle East, many regimes that have forever claimed to speak for its people are now being fought with each constituent fiber of its people.
This brings me back to Shalit. A year ago, I was in Israel when Shalit's parents began marching from their home in the north of the country all the way to the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem. It took them twelve days, picking up supporters as they went, and when they arrived, they were 20,000 strong, flooding Jerusalem like the Romans. For a year now, family and supporters have camped out in a tent on Mr. Netanyahu's sidewalk to pressure him into making the concessions needed to secure Shalit's release. If nothing is done, he will turn 25 years old this August having spent half of his third decade in captivity.
It's true, there is no universal American equivalent to the Israeli rite of passage of compulsory army service. It is also true that the gulf between American and Israeli Jews seems only destined to grow the more isolated Israel becomes. But while the new guard may be tired of dealing with the controversial baggage of Israel and its elusive peace, refusing the causes of ordinary people (coreligionists or not) is what will stain our generation's legacy. Those who abandon their obligation to make the world better because knowledge they have acquired is unsettling to them make a caricature of our era's sense of privilege. It's time that the dint of Jewish 'chosenness' wear itself off as a birthright and reconfigure itself as an ambition.
A slew of writings has recently emerged about the "evangelical feminism" represented by women like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Since I studied women like these for my first book, "God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission," I've been on a few reporters' call lists for commentary. A lot of confusion remains, however, and I hope I can contribute something more substantial to this discussion.
First, everyone should realize that the version of evangelical feminism we're witnessing in current Republican politics is a far cry from this term's original meaning. As Pam Cochran has written in her important study, "Evangelical Feminism: A History," the movement in its earlier form emerged in the 1970s. Its promoters were Christian women who believed that Jesus was a thoroughgoing egalitarian and that Christian principles were perfectly compatible with the ideals of equality emerging from the Women's Liberation Movement. While evangelical feminism has taken a number of different directions since then, it typically leans moderately left on most political issues, which is one reason why it has captured the wrath of hardline complementarians like Wayne Grudem and John Piper. ("Complementarianism" is the view that God designed men and women not to be equal but to be complementary, with men as the leaders and women as helpmeets.)
Palin and Bachmann decidedly do not lean left. What is "feminist" about them, for those who want to use that descriptive, is their belief that God calls women no less than men to fight His battles against Satan on earth. Women hold awesome power as spiritual warriors, in this worldview; they're not doormats, nor should their godly duties be confined to the domestic sphere. This is its own sort of egalitarianism, to be sure, but it is one far more compatible with the complementarian theology of arch-conservative Protestantism than with the feminism of liberal religion. After all, Bachmann and Palin have both made much of their roles as wives, mothers and churchgoers in a way meant to show that their political leadership will not upend the gender hierarchy so crucial in the conservative evangelical home and church sanctuary.
To the feminists who make their homes in secular or religiously liberal circles -- such as member of the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Center for Women's Global Leadership, the International Alliance of Women, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights -- women like Palin and Bachmann represent a dangerously regressive form of womanhood: a sort of capitulation to the hierarchical gender norms of yore. Even to hear them called feminist feels anathema, especially since their politics show a willingness to execute policies that do nothing to empower individual women, men and children on earth. And I expect that many of the earlier evangelical feminist pioneers (the late Nancy Hardesty, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, etc.) have been just as unhappy to see the media now using this term with no apparent recognition of its origins.
The more interesting phenomenon here is to see how surprised so many pundits continue to be at the fact that so many American women and men actually LIKE newfangled evangelical feminists such as Bachmann and Palin. Of course they do! These women embody that combination of conventional beauty (with a wink of sex appeal), earnestness, piety, accessibility and steely certitude of their own godliness that comprises the highest ideal of white conservative evangelical womanhood today. They're like those pretty, popular girls at church camp by whom awkward girls like me hoped to be acknowledged, or even (gosh) befriended. Always, the boys liked them best, but you felt cooler just basking in their aura. If these girls accepted you, you knew you were OK.
Palin and Bachmann are also excellent at embodying the female victim: a woman who works hard to make it on her smarts and hard work but who gets criticized for her looks and scorned as a dumb girl, over and over again. Liberals may scoff at Palin's criticisms of the lamestream media's obsessive derision, but she's frankly got a point. I am no fan of the political programs of either woman, and yet -- I'll admit it -- the appallingly sexist mockery of them has more than once inspired me to identify with them against their smug denigrators. For me, raised by a feminist mother and a feminist myself since adolescence, that's saying something.
Even today, many American women from all walks of life experience feelings of degradation that stem from the socialized devaluation of their femaleness. Conservative and liberal women alike endure subtle forms of misogyny every day. In my experience, sharing these war stories is one practice that bridges women across many other kinds of social divides. For evangelicals, to be persecuted is to be blessed; and the more Palin and Bachmann are belittled (rather than civilly debated), the greater their popularity. Surely, we are smart enough to understand that.
Perhaps we should take heart that the evangelical feminism represented by Palin and Bachmann is so wildly popular among segments of conservative Americans. Even if its appeal is as much about style as about substance, a door has opened that will not be easily shut. There's no reason why feminists of another, more progressive sort couldn't take a lesson here, if we pause to consider what it may be.
While the public debate about the Republican budget focused on the sharp reactions against Paul Ryan's Medicare privatization scheme, the other big "M" in health care, Medicaid, hasn't received the attention it deserves. As a result, the Obama administration has proposed cuts in Medicaid. These will undermine the achievements of its own historic health care law and harm access to health care for tens of millions of women, children and seniors.
Unlike Medicare, our national health insurance program for seniors and the disabled, Medicaid comprises 51 different state programs (including Washington DC) operating under a set of federal rules, financed by both the federal and state governments. As a result, it's much harder for the feds to control Medicaid costs through policy changes. The Ryan/Republican budget doesn't even try; it simply limits the amount that the federal government will spend on Medicaid and shifts the rest of the costs to the states, while weakening the rules so that states can dump people out of the program.
Unfortunately, most of the proposals that have been made by President Obama in the debt-ceiling negotiations are a kinder and gentler version of the same wrong-headed policy of shifting costs to states, and through them to American families, rather than dealing with the underlying reasons that Medicaid costs are rising.
It's true that Medicaid costs are increasing, but that's not because Medicaid has done a poor job of controlling health care costs, at least compared with the rest of the nation's health care system. For example, from 2000 to 2009 private health insurance companies spending per person increased by 7.7% each year while Medicaid spending on acute care health services -- doctor, hospital, prescriptions, tests, mental health -- increased by 5.6% a year. Medicaid did an even better job controlling spending on long term care, which went up an average of just 3% a year per beneficiary, the same rate at which the economy grew and lower that the overall rate of medical inflation (4.1%).
To really see where Medicaid spends it money, you only need to look at the 5% of Medicaid beneficiaries who are responsible for more than 50% of the costs. These are people with very serious, chronic health conditions and serious disabilities. President Obama knows this -- in fact, he raised the issue at the National Governor's Association in February.
Rather than dealing with the root causes of high Medicaid spending, the Obama administration proposes to cut $100 billion from Medicaid over the next decade, mostly by changing the way it pays states for the program. The biggest change would be to reimburse states at the same rate for all their Medicaid patients, unlike now, where states get a different rate for different populations, such as children or seniors. The new so-called "blended rate" would be set at a lower amount than current health spending. Like the Ryan plan, the proposal is simply a cut to states, albeit a much smaller one than Ryan proposed and without the loosening of rules on who and what to cover included in the Republican budget. States would still cut back on who and what it covers, if only to the extent allowed within the current rules. States would also cut payments to providers, which in many cases -- particularly physicians, dentists and hospitals in some states -- would make it harder for patients to get needed medical care.
The "blended rate" proposal also strikes a blow at the Affordable Care Act, which is counting on Medicaid to provide care to more than half of the 33 million uninsured who will be covered under the new law. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will reimburse states 100% of the cost of these new enrollees for the first three years and gradually reduce that to 90%. Compare that to the average 57% now that the federal government pays as its share of Medicaid. The blended rate would result in states having to pay a lot more for people who become eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. As a result, states will throw up more barriers to enroll these working families and will scream more loudly about how the ACA is hurting their budgets. That later charge has almost no basis in fact now, but will become true under the blended rate proposal.
A second Obama administration proposal would close off one source that states now use to finance Medicaid, taxes on health care providers. Since states would be reluctant to replace these taxes with other taxes, they would also cut their spending on Medicaid, lowering federal spending.
In fact, only 10% to 15% of the cuts in Medicaid spending in the Obama proposal would come from rational savings in the system -- increased efficiencies in providing medical equipment and prescription drugs -- as opposed to simply giving states less money and making it harder for them to raise money for Medicaid.
The Affordable Care Act was a huge step toward a more rational health system, but the Obama proposals for Medicaid in the budget take us backward. Instead, the President should accelerate reforms that focus on the handful of high cost patients that drive most of the costs, by requiring states to implement care coordination programs which provide systems and incentives for health care providers to improve the care of the chronically.
Early this June, Senator Jay Rockefeller announced that 41 Democrats had pledged to "stand united against any efforts to slash Medicaid." Their action was aimed at the debt-ceiling and budget talks. Unfortunately, their resolve will be tested soon, in the Medicaid proposal made by their Democratic President.
Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, whose book on the campaign to win reform will be published in 2012. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform. This post has been re-posted from newdeal20.org.
On July 9th, South Sudan will declare its independence, becoming Africa's newest nation. The challenges it faces are many. 50 years of war and conflict have seriously undermined the capacity of institutions at all levels to provide justice. Scores of cases of human rights violations and abuses, including sexual violence have remained uninvestigated, unprosecuted or unpunished.
Conflict-related sexual violence is one of history's greatest silences. In South Sudan as elsewhere, it brings stigmatization and rejection, diseases and reproductive health issues, psychological trauma and unwanted pregnancies, and damages the entire social fabric. It has held communities hostage by preventing women from participating in public and economic life, and undertaking many chores common to rural life, from gathering water and wood, to working in the fields to sustain their families. It has kept girls away from school, and reinforced gender discrimination.
At this formative moment, survivors of sexual violence regard the birth of the nation of South Sudan with hope, anxiously awaiting proof that the new institutions will help address such injustices and prevent future violations.
Last March, my office received a request from the Government of South Sudan to assist in the drafting of the country's transitional constitution with a special focus on prevention and response to sexual violence. UN Security Council resolution 1888 of 2009 gives me the mandate to dispatch a Team of Experts on the Rule of Law to do exactly this.
During its just concluded visit to South Sudan, the Team had one major focus: Securing the rights of victims of conflict-related sexual violence - including recommending what South Sudan authorities must do to prevent the recurrence of such crimes in the future. The Team focused on the Bill of Rights, women's participation in public and political life, and the rule of law and accountability - issues central to the rule of law as it relates to sexual violence in conflict. Those they met with underscored that rape by armed individuals is a prevalent facet of life, closely followed by limited awareness of the rights of individuals, and lack of access to justice forsurvivors.
I welcome the Government of South Sudan's commitment to address the issue of sexual violence in its draft constitution. The Team of Experts made a number of recommendations in this regard, including the elaboration of a separate article obligating the Government to enact laws to combat sexual violence, and ensuring that customs and traditions as sources of legislation should only apply if they are in conformity with the Bill of Rights. In addition I would encourage the inclusion of a provision on extradition, as well as a general provision on international cooperation in criminal matters. The government has taken commendable measures to ensure women's participation in public and political life. To reinforce this important commitment, the government may wish to specifically stipulate the participation of women at 25-30 percent, across all institutions, agencies and commissions, and at all levels. It is also important that women not be held to a higher qualification standard than men.
In the spirit of universal accountability, crimes under international law should be excluded from amnesty under all circumstances, including where senior government officials or military high command are implicated. Formulating Codes of Conduct for the police, the armed forces and the national security service, etc, that reflect zero tolerance for sexual violence is critical.
South Sudan has a unique opportunity to establish a constitutional foundation that places women and the family centrally in the birth of a new nation. By heralding women's rights, and particularly their protection from sexual violence, the Government of South Sudan will send an unequivocal message. The world is looking towards South Sudan on this historic occasion. It's an opportunity not to be missed.
Margot Wallström is UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict
With the nation about to go into default, members of Congress were forced to cancel their July 4th recess and report to work (like the rest of America) on Tuesday. It's about time.
Through the first six months of the year, the House and Senate have been in session at the same time for a mere 60 days. That's an average of a whopping two weeks of vacation a month. Meanwhile, the average American (lucky enough to have a job) has put in twice as many work days -- 125 to be precise -- in the same span of time.
Lack of face time on C-SPAN would be one thing if Congress was the model of efficiency, moving at the speed of light to pass laws aimed at improving the state of our (increasingly frayed) union. You probably don't need me to tell you this, but it's failing on that score, too.
Clearly, Congress needs some motivation. So let's pay them on commission. If they don't produce, they don't get paid. If the current state of affairs is any indication, we'd save a lot of money.
According to the Library of Congress, the 112th Congress has passed 23 pieces of legislation that have become law this year. You may wish to sit down before reading the next series of sentences.
Of this total, five were for the purpose of naming federal buildings (three post offices and two courthouses). Three laws appointed members to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. One extended the term of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission. In other words, no problem solving. No nation building or repair.
Eight laws extended old ones, including three related to airports. One, the "Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and Repayment of Exchange Subsidy Overpayments Act of 2011" amended parts of the tax code most of us had no idea even existed. In other words, nothing new. No new solutions. No new approaches. Same old, same old.
Finally, five laws spent money. In other words, they finally got around to passing a federal budget six months after it was due.
If you performed like this in your job, would you still have one?
For all of their hard work -- missed deadlines, festering problems, two weeks of vacation a month --members of Congress earn $174,000 annually. They also vest in a generous pension plan after five years of service, even if they've been convicted of a felony. Legislative efforts to reform Congressional pensions have repeatedly failed. Surprise, surprise.
No doubt, members of Congress will tell you that when they're not in Washington, they are not on vacation. They're meeting with constituents back home or are otherwise engaged in "official business." I worked for a U.S. Senator and will admit that this is true. I will also concede that their work days in Washington are often frenetic, though this is mainly because of all of the time they spend elsewhere.
It is also true that virtually all of the "constituent" work in their districts is geared toward reelection. Whether it's fund raising or hobnobbing with voters at a town carnival or chatting with them at a diner.
I am all for paying our public servants handsome salaries. A few of them actually deserve it. I want the best and the brightest working on our nation's most difficult problems. Like the economy, energy, the economy, education, the economy, infrastructure, the economy, terrorism, the economy, health care and the economy.
But I also want our problems fixed and plans made for the future. You know, what you do in your own home -- repair the roof leak, weed the garden, set up a college fund for the kids.
Congress lacks seriousness of purpose. They are too busy tearing one another down. Maybe if they were compensated like so many Americans -- by commission -- they would get more done. They could receive a base salary, say, equivalent to the median American salary of around $50,000. Beyond that, they would be paid only for performance. No federal budget, no paycheck. National default? No paycheck (and no reelection).
In response to the debt ceiling drama, serious people are now talking about the President's ability to use the 14th Amendment to declare the debt limit unconstitutional. That's a welcome development in a debate too often characterized by wrong-headed economics and outright demagoguery. If Obama seizes the moment, we could not only end this damaging political grandstanding, but redirect the national conversation to what really matters: fiscal policy that addresses the needs of ordinary Americans.
As far as we know, the originator of the constitutional arguments against the debt ceiling was former Reagan Administration official, Bruce Bartlett, whose last essay on the subject, "The Debt Limit Option President Obama Can Use," has started to gain significant policy traction. More recently, Treasury Secretary Geithner has made much the same point:
I think there are some people who are pretending not to understand it, who think there's leverage for them in threatening a default. I don't understand it as a negotiating position. I mean really think about it, you're going to say that-- can I read you the 14th amendment?
The Treasury Secretary subsequently did just that, quoting from the amendment to the Constitution adopted on July 9, 1868:
'The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for the payments of pension and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion' -- this is the important thing -- 'shall not be questioned.
Senator Charles Schumer has also invoked the argument. In all cases, the logic is pretty much the same: the Constitution trumps the law regarding the debt ceiling.
What's so great about this? Well, it could kill the debt ceiling -- and perhaps, along with it, other arbitrary constraints which foolishly constrain the efficacy of fiscal policy. Yet curiously, very few champions of aggressive fiscal policy are prepared to go this far, despite the fact that these pointless negotiations are surely undermining private sector confidence. They point to a very real prospect of the US economy going back into recession if the austerity plans that are currently being discussed become law.
In a recent article, Katrina vanden Heuvel makes an excellent point about the opportunity for a more progressive budget arising if Obama goes constitutional: "Invoking the 14th Amendment defuses the bomb Republicans have strapped to the hostage." That's right: the President could well end the debt ceiling negotiations and craft a new budget on purely progressive lines. And he could do so on very solid legal grounds, as she illustrates:
In Freytag v. Commissioner (1991), the Supreme Court held that the president has "the power to veto encroaching laws . . . or to disregard them when they are unconstitutional." The final word still may lie with the Supreme Court, but in the interim, the president need not wait for its opinion. "As a simple matter of constitutional logic, the president can refuse to enforce a statute he believes violates the Constitution," said Professor Barry Friedman of NYU Law School in a telephone interview with me...
It is also unlikely that the action would be successfully challenged in court. Only Congress would have standing to sue, but doing so would require a joint resolution, something a Democratic-controlled Senate would almost certainly block.
But there's more. So far, our fiscal policy has largely been directed toward the top 5% of our population. It amounts to unfair punishment for lower income groups but asks nothing of our financial and corporate elites. Ending the debt ceiling could be an important step forward in redirecting policy away from bank bailouts, wasteful corporate tax subsidies and mooted tax holidays, and toward ideas such as a Government Job Guarantee, a proper health care system (which isn't grounded in private health insurance) and a first-class education system for all.
The budget/debt ceiling negotiations have focused on spending cuts and tax hikes which are neither necessary nor desirable at this juncture. The time to invoke higher taxation or reduced government spending is when our economy is operating close to full capacity, experiencing real resource constraints, and thereby threatening inflation. Progressives need to stop accepting the false logic that we "need to be responsible" and "deal with the budget deficit at some point in the future" on the spurious grounds of "affordability", solvency", or "because the bond markets won't fund us any longer." That's all wrong.
Here's a better idea: Invoke the 14th amendment and then stop talking about the budget deficit altogether. The US is not broke and cannot go bankrupt. Let go of that myth. When invoking the 14th, the President could argue that the deficit reduction principles embodied in the debt ceiling limit should never be an object of government policy. He can point out that non-discretionary elements of the budget -- the automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance -- will fall as economic growth resumes, thereby reducing the deficit. He can remind us that there is only one reason why growth slows relative to productive capacity: Some sector spends less than before while another sector does not plug the spending drain.
Progressives have gotten into the habit of talking about making "sacrifices" now by starting the process of reducing the deficit. But this is a slippery slope, because it neglects the reality that shrinking the government's deficit will require either that the private sector spend more relative to its income or that the US current account deficit fall sharply. The fact is that households are still heavily indebted and business spending remains flat; the external sector is not adding net aggregate demand to the US economy. That means that the public deficit is insufficient to close the spending gap. So an arbitrary attempt to reduce the overall stock of government debt is doomed to failure.
Remember, the budget deficit (and the corresponding negotiations over the debt ceiling) cannot be considered independently of the other sectors in the economy. Reducing the government sector deficit from the current 9% or so of GDP toward balance will require some combination of a private sector movement toward greater spending (and likely more private sector debt accumulation - which got us into this mess in the first place), along with a reduction in our trade deficit which, in aggregate, would amount to a total of 9% of GDP. That's a massive adjustment.
The problem is that actually trying to balance the budget through spending cuts or tax increases could reduce economic growth... Lower economic growth could conceivably reduce our current account deficit-by making Americans too poor to buy imports, by lowering US wages and prices to make our exports more competitive, and by reducing the value of the dollar. Note that all of those are painful adjustments for Americans. And it might not work, because it requires the US to slow without that affecting the global economy-if it also slows, US exports will not increase.
A sovereign government can always determine spending and taxation levels, assuming the absence of silly self-imposed limits such as a debt ceiling. What it can't do is determine in advance the size of the tax revenue or the overall amount directed to the automatic stabilizers. These are both a reflection of economic activity largely outside the control of government. And that means, as Wray notes, that "the budgetary outcome-whether surplus, balanced, or deficit-is not really discretionary."
The notion of a debt ceiling limit is arbitrary. And it is not grounded in any kind of economic logic. If there are legitimate constitutional reasons to eliminate the debt ceiling, we have a wonderful opportunity to eliminate a host of constraints that foolishly direct government policy away from public purpose.
Too bad the President didn't invoke this last Monday. July 4th would have been the perfect time to invoke the Constitution to rid the government of this self-imposed Congressional tyranny once and for all.
Marshall Auerback is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator.
This article originally appeared in the New Deal 2.0 blog.
Arianna Huffington spoke to Simon Jack on "BBC Breakfast" about the launch of HuffPost U.K. She told him, "We're very excited to be joining a really thriving culture... and to bring the signature part of The Huffington Post, which is really engagement, as well as original reporting, aggregation, and thousands of blogs."
When asked how the site will translate to the U.K., Huffington explained, ''Everything we do here is going to be from a British perspective, with a great British team. We're offering a platform for anybody here who has an interesting idea -- who is well-known or not well-known -- to write about it."
Since I'm an only child, and since my parents and I migrated from India away from our immediate family in 1980, I haven't directly experienced the loss of someone close to me. I was very close to my grandmother, but by the time she passed away from the world, I had already been in America for over 12 years, and time had diminished any attachment I had for her.
My dad cried like I had never seen him cry before. His father had passed away when he was only seven years old, so he was quite close to her. His major regret was that he couldn't be with her when she passed.
These memories come upon me every once in a while, as I meditate on the rooftop of our monastery in the East Village. Looking across the street I witness a hearse pull up to the funeral home. The driver opens the back door and pulls out a coffin with a recently deceased individual and rolls it into the home.
It's a constant reminder that, all around me, restaurants, delis, and a variety of other businesses are opening or going out of business, but the one establishment that seems to remain constant and unaffected by the economy is that funeral home.
I also can't help but wonder how not too long ago, the person in that casket was a living, breathing individual with family and friends, and now they're gone. What must it be like for those they left behind? What was their final experience the few moments before their departure? It seems like such a mystery. A few moments before, they were here and now they've disappeared off the face of the earth.
There's little doubt that it's an unpleasant experience. The entire body and all its functions are coming to a halt. Everything we hold dear is on the verge of being stripped away from us. Losing simple things such as a cell phone or wallet can be quite stressful and frustrating, so what to speak of losing everything, all at once! Often times, death can show up at the door without giving any kind of an advance notice.
Is there anything we can do to prepare for that final moment of our lives? Or, are we to remain helpless victims? I heard one of my teachers explain that "Life is the preparation and death is the final examination." Obviously, we're not going to be able to ward off death. The death rate is and always will be one hundred percent.
However, just as we prepare for any exam in our life, whether it's a driving test or an academic test -- preparation for death is very much required. The more we prepare, the better equipped we'll be in dealing with the inescapable truth of the situation. Death is not a test we can cram for the night before.
We have a subconscious tendency to deny our mortality. Even though it's happening all around us, and everyday we're reminded of it in so many ways, we just never think that it'll actually happen to us. Driving by a cemetery might make us a little reflective, but somehow we're not able to connect that to our own life.
Death is like the elephant in the room. It can't be ignored, but we do a really good job of it. It's natural for us to be fearful of our own mortality.
This reminds me of a conversation that takes place in the famous Hindu epic Mahabharata between a wise king and a realized sage. The sage asks the king, "What's the most amazing thing you've seen in life?" The king replies that "The most amazing thing I've seen is that death is taking place everywhere, but no one ever thinks it's going to happen to them."
The Hindu scriptures explain that we come into this world with a certain number of breaths and the countdown begins the moment we exit the womb. Since we don't really know when it's going to happen, every moment should be lived in such a way that we're preparing our consciousness for the final moment.
This doesn't mean that we're constantly thinking of our demise and getting depressed by such thoughts. It means living life in such a way that we're constantly endeavoring to create a balance between our material and spiritual lives.
The wisdom found within the Hindu/Vedic tradition of India can provide us with a less fearful and brighter outlook on our own mortality, while teaching us to better prepare for our final moments. Their teachings can also help us better deal with the loss of a loved one.
As an example, I'd like to share a few passages from the Bhagavad Gita, which can provide us with a beautiful and broad perspective on life, death, and our ultimate existence:
As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.
The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.
These verses alleviate our very basic and most fundamental concern, the fear of ceasing to exist. The Gita explains that the only thing about us that deteriorates and dies is the body, which is compared to an old set of garments.
The real person, the soul, continues to live on without being affected by any of the elements of this world, including the factor of time, which is ultimately responsible for diminishing the life of all matter. Time, however, has no effect on the spiritual self (soul).
This isn't our first life and it's not going to be our last. The soul is eternal and it will continue to exist even after the demise of the body. Knowing this can provide some solace about our own existence and the existence of those we care for.
It also teaches us that in order to properly prepare for that final exam, we need to engage in spiritual acts, which will help us to realize the nature and reality of our soul, and simultaneously help distance us from the bodily concept of life.
Federal audits are turning up misspent taxpayer dollars in a $5 billion stimulus program aimed at lowering the utility bills of disabled, poor and older Americans by making their homes more energy-efficient.
In West Virginia, which received $38 million in weatherization funds, some of the money went for lobbying, to consultants who did little work and to recipients with connections to state officials who are doling out the funds, the Energy Department's inspector general found.
In one case, West Virginia paid $25,000 to a lawyer for writing two sentences stating that weatherization contracts had been reviewed, reportedly after four hours' work at a state office, according to a report analyzing how the federal stimulus money was used. A $20,000 consulting fee was paid to the former director of the state's weatherization program after he left the job in May 2009 even though there were no specific work requirements set for the consulting contract.
The federal program's own watchdog had warned at the outset that some of the money in the Energy Department's weatherization program, part of the Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus intended to give a jolt to the economy, could be wasted.
"I have said from the beginning of the [economic] recovery program that weatherization is high-risk," said Earl Devaney , who as chairman of the Recovery Transparency and Accountability Board is Washington's top cop overseeing how stimulus dollars are spent. Noted Devaney in a statement to iWatch News : "There was little in the way of internal controls."
Mismanagement in West Virginia ranged from giving preferential treatment to state employees and their relatives, to shoddy work at the homes of disabled and poor people who were supposed to benefit the most, the Energy Department's inspector general report found. "We found problems in the areas of weatherization workmanship, financial management, prioritization of applicants for weatherization services, and compliance with laws and regulations," the report said.
Between September 2009 and August 2010, for instance, more than half of weatherized homes that were re-inspected needed to be redone because of faulty work, the report said. Meanwhile, $2,500 was spent on lobbying in Washington - even though such use is expressly forbidden - to "get the word out" that there wasn't enough funding to administer stimulus programs, it said.
Concluded the inspector general after looking at West Virginia's books: "The risk of failing to achieve Recovery Act goals, along with the risks of fraud, waste and abuse, remain at unacceptable levels."
While the Energy Department's inspector general has examined only a handful of states, it has found evidence of a range of misspending and waste.
George Collard , an assistant inspector general for the Energy Department, said the audits show the quality of the states' programs varied greatly, and that infractions often are minor. West Virginia is one of the states with "more significant miscues," Collard told iWatch News . "That's not to say there haven't been problems in other states."
Critics say the audits show that abuses might be widespread.
"You see a lot of smoke. There's got to be a fire," said Steve Ellis , the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit watchdog that follows government spending. The question is: "How much?"
A 2010 special report by the Energy Department inspector general warned that the weatherization program had made "little progress" in achieving its stated aims -- helping large numbers of poor Americans lower their heating bills.
States seemed to face the biggest challenge, said Collard, in managing the program's finances and making sure that the work on homes was of sufficient quality. One problem has been the sheer volume of money that flowed into state agencies ill-equipped to cope with it. As part of its job-creation stimulus law, the federal government rushed money to the states, which then handed it out to community action agencies.
West Virginia, for example, received almost eight times its usual weatherization funding through the federal stimulus grant.
Ellis, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said community agencies weren't prepared for such a big increase in funding. "These were groups used to drinking out of the water fountain at the elementary school," he said. "And they got a fire hose of cash."
At least seven more Energy Department audit reports are anticipated before the end of the year.
West Virginia officials have said they are working to improve administration of the weatherization program.
"The State of West Virginia has made a number of improvements in how they implement the weatherization program," said Kathleen Hogan, the deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency. "However, as this report shows, there is work still to be done."
Collard was hopeful that West Virginia and other states would be able to fix their programs. "While our audits have identified problems with varying levels of degree, the departments and states have been proactive about the findings of the Office of Inspector General."
Republicans and conservatives make it really, really difficult for us to avoid focusing on their lapses in intelligence. And with a conga-line of top shelf Republicans front and center for the 2012 presidential nomination, we're being treated to more examples of nitwittery from these people.
In the last six or seven months alone, there are enough examples of Republicans botching very basic ideas and facts to fill volumes of "Bushism" style novelty calendars.
Sarah Palin, the matriarch of Republican idiocy, didn't just botch the Paul Revere story. Among a variety of other gaffes on Twitter ("cackle of rads?") and elsewhere, she has repeatedly botched the First Amendment suggesting it protects radio show hosts and others from offended citizens. Both John Boehner and Herman Cain have confused the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution. Eric Cantor tried to pass a bill that would somehow magically become law with just a House vote, and this magical law would inexplicably force a separate bill to also magically become law without a Senate vote, a conference committee or a presidential signature. Speaking of lawmaking, Herman Cain wants bills that are three pages or less -- presumably with cartoony illustrations by Richard Scarry. Michele Bachmann thinks John Quincy Adams is a founding father and mistakenly linked her campaign with creepy clown/killer John Wayne Gacy. The list goes on and on.
That's not to say all modern conservatives are stupid. I simply don't subscribe to the crowd-pleasing notion that they're idiots.
However, there's a spectrum of anti-intellectualism on the right, and that's a fact. The Republican Spectrum of Ignorance runs the gamut from "genuinely smart but wrong" on one extreme to "genuinely stupid" on the other with various points in between. (The categories can be overlapped, Venn Diagram style, and applied to specific conservative players.)
The categories:
Genuinely Smart but Wrong. These are modern conservatives who are, as the category title suggests, very well-educated and bright, and therefore an endangered species. They can construct coherent thoughts and they try to be intellectually honest in constructing their arguments. But where they fall short is their adherence to ideology. Despite, for example, generally agreed-upon economic arguments about stimulating job creation, they'll insist that tax cuts and spending cuts that impact the middle and working classes are the only solution even though tax cuts do not stimulate job or economic growth, and spending cuts actually make things worse.
Deliberately Ignorant. This brand of conservative exploits the idea that voters want leaders who remind them of themselves -- someone they can have a beer with -- so they deliberately act like slack-jawed yokels at every opportunity. But just below the surface, they're very clever and calculating. Irrespective of political affiliation, we shouldn't want leaders who are just like us, or, for that matter, a random shit-kicker at the bar. We ought to instinctively demand leaders who are better, smarter and more disciplined -- times a thousand. But Republican voters disagree. And so they get these phony-baloney hacks posing as ordinary yickadoos.
Un- or Miseducated. These conservatives are often the ones who botch general knowledge trivia and historical facts, or who don't understand how basic democracy works. I've coined the term "miseducated" here to encompass politicians like Michele Bachmann who, while she studied tax law at William & Mary, obviously missed out on proper history classes during her education. They believe that secession is somehow a noble pursuit despite the fact that 600,000 Americans were killed the last time it was attempted. They don't get it because they never learned it -- or they mislearned it. George W. Bush had extensive schooling but didn't really study because he didn't have to. His family name carried him through his higher education.
Incompetent and Incapable. George W. Bush and Sarah Palin also fit squarely in this category of conservative anti-intellectualism. While Palin, for example, might have been given information by her advisers about the role of the vice president or tidbits about Paul Revere and bell-ringing of some sort, she utterly scrambled the re-telling of that information, which exposed her general incompetence. If you're unable to capably regurgitate information, you really have no place in a role that's almost entirely dependent upon communicating ideas. And if you can't communicate ideas, there's even less of a chance you'll be able to come up with passable ideas of your own, making you increasingly susceptible to the ambitions and political machinations of your advisers.
Genuinely Stupid. At the far end of the spectrum, this category speaks for itself. These Republicans fortuitously stumbled their way into elected office or the news media due to their congeniality or money or both despite being dumber than a sack of Jell-o.
The wild card category is, simply put, Crazy. Going back to Michele Bachmann, I don't think she's stupid. I think she's crazy. Not in the clinical sense (which is her own business), but specifically with regards to her radical ideas blended together with her miseducation -- a concoction that makes her so far removed from even the fringes of the mainstream that I can't believe she's actually being taken seriously as a presidential candidate.
So it stands to reason that a massive assault against our system of public education has been a priority of modern conservatism during this era of incomprehensible austerity.
For Republicans, education and intellectualism is the enemy of their wafer-thin bumper-sticker marketing strategy, and so denying people an affordable education has become a matter of survival for the Republican Party. An uninformed voter can be manipulated by sloganeering and trickery. A smarter voter is more likely to see through shallow appeals to fear and transparently deceptive marketing schemes.
On another level, Republicans insist the federal government should stay out of the business of education (considering the Republican effort to privatize education, "business" was used here intentionally) and leave it up to the states, yet Republicans nationwide are slashing education budgets at the state level. Pennsylvania's Republican governor Tom Corbett proposed cutting $825 million from the state's higher education budget. Florida's Republican governor (and Middle Earth gangrel creature) Rick Scott proposed $1.75 billion in cuts to K-12. Chris Christie cut the New Jersey education budget by $812 million, while protecting tax rates for the super rich. Fortunately, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled the cuts to be unconstitutional.
Progressive talk radio host Thom Hartmann reported on the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in this video. While I'm here, it's worth noting that Hartmann is a phenomenon. A Renaissance man of the highest order and a personality who conservatives would do well to pay attention to. As the host of the most popular nationally syndicated liberal radio show, and the host of a daily TV show, Hartmann, much like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, possesses a killer mixture of both passion and stone cold wonk, informed by a strong academic background. And, unlike many Republican media personalities, Hartmann treats conservatives directly and fairly on his show, even though he routinely (and politely) shreds their myopia by employing a wicked sharp, encyclopedic grasp of history, facts and reality. I don't hear any Republicans doing the same, and I'm not holding my breath. Instead, on the right, we most often tend to hear repackaged fiction torn from the pages of modern conservatism's answer to L. Ron Hubbard, the atheist fiction author and socialized Medicare recipient Ayn Rand, who is worshipped by everyone from Rand Paul (named after Ayn Rand) to Alan Greenspan to Paul Ryan and the bulk of the tea party.
There are very obvious solutions to both increasing funds for public education as well as improving it. Rather than the trendy move towards right-leaning reforms proposed by Michelle Rhee or "Rhee-form" (get it?) it makes better sense to pursue reforms proposed by education specialists like Steve Edwards. Edwards' plan includes increased emphasis on developing leadership skills and de-emphasizing both testing and conformity. But primarily, Edwards suggests tailoring reforms to specific community needs, and to subsequently adjust those reforms as the community demographics shift, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach rigidly foisted upon both city and suburban schools. As the principal of East Hartford High School in East Hartford, Connecticut, Edwards reforms significantly improved graduation rates, reduced suspensions and drop-outs, and even reduced the number of fights by half. A breath of fresh air to say the least. So what are we waiting for?
Progressives and Democrats need to shout the following question into every microphone available: Who is best able to contribute to deficit reduction: the super rich or our embattled public school system? The single most effective antidote to our national decline is education. It stimulates the economy over the long run, it encourages innovation, it resurrects the American dream and the middle class and, most importantly, it encourages informed civic participation. Clearly an array of benefits the Republicans and modern conservatives are merrily against as they undermine education in lieu of tax cuts for Koch Brothers and Donald Trump.
The Republicans are welcome to act like idiots as a means of pandering to dumbstupids. Just leave the rest of us alone. America needs more smarties, and I don't think we can afford to wait for the right-wing to catch up to speed.
The most common question I am asked during my book tour for Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, is: what was your favorite book of the year? I can understand the question. For one year I read a book a day and wrote about each book I read. I read 365 books, all new to me, by 365 different authors. Of course I must have had favorites. But one favorite? When my year was over, I had over ninety books on my website's list of "Great Books." Different books that wowed me, awed me, and made me sigh when I'd finished reading them: sighs of satisfaction and sighs wishing for more. Sighs that are signs of a great book.
A great book happens when I pick up a book and can't put it down again; when I cannot suppress the sighs upon finishing it; when I cannot wait to tell everyone I know: read this book!
But how to pick a favorite? No one would ever ask me to pick which of my children is my favorite, or which of my parents or sisters I prefer over the other. Family cannot be so divided up, one on the side designated "favorite" and all the others grim-faced on the other side of the line, designated "not-so-favorite." The books I love are like family (complete with a black sheep or two) and I cannot select one out of the bunch to deem most favored, most special, or most great.
As a child, it was easy to pick a best friend, a favorite sibling, and a favorite book: Harriet the Spy was my first favorite book, and later, Nancy Drew's The Clue in the Old Album too its place. By high school, I had discovered Graham Greene and The Burnt-Out Case and on the cusp of college, Nadime Gordimer's Burger's Daughter took favored book status. And then as I settled into being an adult, the favorite books instead became favored authors: Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Dickens, Philip Roth, Stewart O'Nan, Thrity Umrigar, Colin Channer, Ursula Le Guin, Barbara Kingsolver, Martha Grimes, Geraldine Brooks, Jose Saramago -- but the list goes on and on, and I cannot possibly name all my favorites, much less pick one favorite book or author, or even genre.
I still fall in love with books, feel the sighs of happiness and satisfaction, and run to the phone to tell everyone I know to read my latest find of greatness. But one favorite book? Can't do it. Please don't make me try. But while we're here: what's your all-time favorite book? I always have room for more, and lungs strong enough to sigh deeply, again and again.
Isn't a 'jobless recovery' as preposterous as a fetus-less pregnancy? We've got a bloody pile-up at the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street, where reality collides with such corporate conceits. And it's the workers who wind up on life support, while the suits speed away from the wreckage undented and undaunted. Back to the bat cave, to plot the next leveraged buyout!
The new HBO documentary, No Contract No Cookies: The Stella D'Oro Strike, premiering on HBO2 tonight at 8pm, tells the story of a beloved Bronx bakery, founded by Italian immigrants in 1932, that now lies shuttered, like so many factories all over America. The saga of how the company went from a thriving family-owned enterprise to a gutted equity fund acquisition is a success story only if you're rooting for our modern day robber barons. For the dwindling middle class and the unwashed masses, it's an American tragedy that's being repeated all over the country.
No Contract No Cookies puts a poignant face -- or 138 faces, to be precise -- on the massacre of manufacturing jobs that CEOs routinely commit in the name of prosperity. At the Stella D'Oro factory, folks from 22 different countries worked convivially alongside New York natives and gained a foothold in the American middle class, only to be kicked off the ladder when Brynwood Partners, a private equity fund, bought the company. In 2008, when the workers' contract expired, Brynwood demanded a 30% pay cut.
Brynwood claimed, as the New York Times' Jennifer 8. Lee reported at the time, "that the hourly wages of $18 to $22 an hour and nine weeks of paid leave made the factory unprofitable," and demanded "significant reductions in wages and benefits in order to move the factory to profitability."
Filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill documented the 11-month strike that ensued, capturing the camaraderie of the close-knit workers who hailed from wildly different backgrounds but shared the belief that their solid work ethic would lay the foundation for a decent future for themselves and their families, as it would have in the past.
But with our economy now founded on fictitious, bubble-based fortunes and sleazy sleights of hand, those who actually make -- or in this case, bake -- anything, are expected to accept stagnating or even declining wages even while the affluent few do better than ever. Middle class workers who banked on promised pensions and health care are now portrayed as pariahs and parasites, while the fraudsters who crashed our economy continue to call all the shots, as Frank Rich laments in his scathingNew York debut.
Brynwood refused to provide the union with financial statements to document its claims that the cuts were needed, and was found guilty of bargaining in bad faith. A federal judge ruled that the workers were entitled to their jobs, their pay, and their benefits, and ordered Brynwood to reinstate the workers.
So, the company invited the workers back and promptly announced that it would close the factory. Stella D'Oro was sold to a company named Lance, which shut the factory and moved operations to a non-union factory in Ohio where labor's a lot cheaper. Mission accomplished! Most of the former Stella D'Oro workers remain unemployed; some found a job at another bakery, only to be laid off again a few months later.
When will we stop lionizing business and demonizing labor? GOP hopefuls like Mitt Romney and Herman Cain tout their supposed business acumen as proof that they've got the right stuff to steer our economy out of the ditch. But, honestly, if you've built your financial empire by buying up companies and then driving the workers who are the backbone of those companies right into that ditch, i.e., laying off laborers to boost shareholder profits, why doesn't that qualify you as a job killer?
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warned that "private equity's wealth extraction business model" creates a "hollow economy." We don't need a CEO in the White House; America is a nation, not a business. And a country where business owners can't figure out how to compensate themselves and their shareholders without screwing their workers is, simply, a country that doesn't work. "No Cookies No Contract" puts a face on the collateral damage brought to us by the Wall Street wizards who'll tell you they're conjuring up value. Value for who?
When most of us think of Scientology, we think of Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Not Janet Reitman, a Rolling Stone journalist who wrote a National Magazine Award-nominated investigation of the Church of Scientology in 2006.
She's spent the last six years digging into this unusual faith, and her new book, "Inside Scientology," reveals much about this unknown world. She interviewed more than 50 people involved with Scientology, almost all of them on the record, and everything triple fact-checked. I was curious how she won the trust of this famously secretive organization, and what she found on the inside.
Brook Wilensky-Lanford: How does the Church of Scientology typically respond to outsiders asking questions?
Janet Reitman: The approach of the church with reporters can be very very aggressive. With anyone they perceive as hostile, which includes reporters, they try to identify what "emotional tone" you're at, and then they go just above it, as a way to raise you up. It's a way of breaking you actually. In my case, they didn't try those tactics. But my general rule is, if you know that you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to be afraid of.
Along with church officials, you also spoke with people who'd left the church. How did you approach them differently?
I spoke to a tremendous number of "quiet defectors" -- and within that group there were a few formerly very high-ranking church officials, who were able to present a church viewpoint without being members. I asked them questions about the philosophy of Scientology, its technology, what it was like when they entered the church in the 1970s and '80s. I got a real historical and spiritual sense from them, which was very unlike the traditional defector. They did defect, but they still considered themselves Scientologists.
One of the things that makes your account unique is that, along with investigating the inner workings of Church leadership, you also focus on individual ordinary Scientologists and their experience. Among these, Natalie Walet really stood out. Can you tell me more about her?
She's one of my favorites. When I met her she was 17 years old, just graduated from high school. Usually when you interview a Scientologist, they will bring along a church official, and then that's it, the interview's ruined. But when Natalie and I first talked, she had her parents' permission, and that was it. Her parents are both involved with Scientology, her father has an independent auditing practice, her grandmother is a Scientologist. Natalie was a true fan of L. Ron Hubbard. She'd been through a lot of personal ups and downs, and she was really feeling her way. We'd have lengthy debates in a way that was fantastic, and rare, and she talked very honestly and very bravely.
Scientology has many characteristics of a corporation as well as a religion. Did you have any trouble reconciling the two?
I talk about it as a religion in America, where they were founded. They're a religion. In terms of their tax status, and the way they're treated, there are privileges they receive that a non-religious group would not. For Natalie, she very much considers it her religion, and I wouldn't want to ever tell her different. I've met a lot of people who believe in it as a religion, so -- sorry critics -- for them, it's a religion.
But it's also a business. It is fundamentally corporate, its leadership is corporate, its interests are corporate. This is not exclusive to Scientology. What is exclusive to Scientology is that there is no other religion that charges you for every single thing you do. You can't do Scientology for free.
So it's both. Look at your history! The Catholic church had the reformation because many people thought it was corrupt and greedy, people were saying "this is about wealth." And there's now an independent movement of people who are starting to say the same thing about Scientology. I think there's already a reformation in process in Scientology.
You say that Scientology is at a major crisis point. What would you be watching to guage the future of the organization?
I'd look at how many church officials are leaving. Two of the defectors in the book, Rinder and Rathbun, were both major, high-level church officials. Rinder was on the ship with L. Ron Hubbard. Rathbun was a friend of [current leader] David Miscavige -- they would watch football together, hang out together. There is no way they would have left unless they felt driven to leave.
David Miscavige's style has been to purge people, to play them off each other, to isolate them, etc. But these are people who just walked the hell out. If even a half-dozen more of these very high level people leave and speak out, that would really spell the end.
David Miscavige is really the Brigham Young to L. Ron Hubbard the founder, and I don't see a new leader that's coming up from within the organization who could be the next leader, who could lead a reformation. It would have to come from outside.
What would Scientology have to do, in your opinion, in order to stand the test of time?
If you want your religion to last, you have to have an appeal. A lot of people show interest in Scientology because of the celebrities. But does that mean you will become a Scientologist because of the celebrities? Even if you think John Travolta's really great so you go and try out Scientology, are you going to stick with it? You're only going to do it if it helps you. But to even know that you have to get to the point of wanting to commit to it, and that was the Church's brilliance prior to this, they had figured out ways to make it appeal to people enough that they'd commit.
But they haven't now. If you're investing in celebrities, in real estate, it's all surface. Scientology has not yet nurtured a culture. Natalie wants that, then she has to create that. But in order to do that, the church has to be free. You have to make it free so you can raise a family in it. Everyone gives money to their religion. But they don't pay with a credit card every time they walk in.
I'm a New York Rangers season ticket holder. The games are great, but I'm going to become a father in a couple months and the 300 section at Rangers games is not a great place to take a little kid. For example, last year I walked in the bathroom during a Rangers/Flyers game to find a guy wearing a Flyers jersey with blood gushing from his face. His buddy was shaking his head and saying, "Dude, I told you not to wear the jersey."
If I want to be in a section where I'd feel okay bringing my kid, it'll cost around $250 per seat. Think of it as the protection money you need to pay to ensure the safety of your family. Yes, the similarities between James Dolan and John Gotti go beyond just driving successful organizations into the ground.
So I was on the fence about renewing. Sensing me wavering, the Rangers sent a letter trying to convince me to re-up by explaining the benefits they provide to their longtime subscribers. Honestly, there weren't a lot of great enticements offered; subscribe for x years, get x% off at the team store. Not much that's really going to get you excited. One item did seem okay -- if you remained a season ticket holder long enough, they'd let you come on the ice for a photo. Not with any players, but it still would be a nice souvenir.
How long do you need to be a subscriber for this, you ask? Sixty years!
Yes, sixty years! The earth will circle the sun 195,000 times before you can set foot on the ice. Not to get all Al Gore on you, but will there even be ice in 2071?
Assuming Madison Square Garden doesn't raise prices over the next 60 years, I'll have to fork over more than $290,000 for my current seats. In all fairness, the amount may be slightly less as I'm sure a few of those seasons will be cancelled due to a lockout.
Someone who gets season tickets when they're 15, will be 75 before they can step on the ice. (By the way, old people love ice; I can hear the shattering hips already.) You get the photo at 75 and then you'll be able to treasure it for 1.4 years before U.S. government actuary tables estimate you'll die. What a deal!
The Rangers don't offer any benefits beyond the 60 years, so here are some suggestions:
70 YEARS Rangers keychain
75 YEARS Your name appears on MSG scoreboard! (Unfortunately, this'll occur during the Rangers 2-week west coast road swing)
90 YEARS "NAPKIN DAZE!" 2 free napkins when you spend over $50 at the concession stand during any afternoon game
100 YEARS A video of Mark Messier sobbing uncontrollably will be played at your funeral
There are a lot of annoying things about committing to season tickets. Paying full price for pre-season games; eating the cost of tickets when you unexpectedly have to work late; the drug dealer feel of meeting Craigslist strangers on a street corner to make a sale; midweek February games where you show up, but the team does not etc.
You'd think a sport that has to resort to a TV contract with Versus would realize their financial future depends on people coming through the gates. I have to believe the NHL needs its attendance more than the other three major sports. But in a Stubhub world it's easy to cherry pick the games you want.
So why get season tickets? Well, it's the same sucker's bet all fanship is based on -- wanting to be part of something. Hell, a couple years ago the Rangers' slogan was "I AM A RANGER!" It was printed right there on the special tickets that they only gave to subscribers.
So you get duped into thinking you're part of something. Then the obnoxious 60-year offer comes along to remind you that this is strictly a financial transaction. The thing you want to be a part of wants no part of you. The Rangers are a stripper and despite all the whispered come-ons, she isn't going to leave with you...or at least not for 60 years. I'm thinking about how that stripper's gonna look in 60 years and realizing it might be time to head home to my new family. So last Thursday I told my sales rep that I wasn't going to renew.
* * *
And then on Saturday the Rangers went out and signed Brad Richards, this off-season's top free agent. How can I leave now? Dammit, one more lap dance and then seriously, I'm done.
Following up on state fiscal challenges, our CBPP team has an important new figure showing that while state revenues are getting better, they're doing so a lot more slowly than in the past.
So I'm like... why? Are there structural changes -- ways in the which the underlying relationship between growth and state revenues have changed -- in play here?
To examine this possibility, I ran a very simple model of state revenues controlling for GDP growth. I ran the model through 2007q1, and predicted revenues through 2011q1. The blue line is real revenues and the red line controls for GDP growth (ignore the green line for now).
Up until the 2000s the fit is actually pretty good, as the predictions closely follow the actual revenue levels. But in this recession and the last one, the model breaks down.
Of course, you can see that in the first figure above. What's interesting here is that you get the same result even controlling for overall GDP growth. That is, you can't blame the weak revenue recovery on slow growth. Something else must be going on. For example, if states have followed the federal model and hollowed out their tax code (by lowering rates or narrowing the base), you'd get a picture like the one from the model.
Also, as my CBPP colleague Nick Johnson suggested, the fact that the last two downturns bit into household wealth -- like asset appreciation -- is important in this context (and GDP doesn't capture the full spate of wealth effects, e.g., it leaves out capital gains). Some states depend more on sales than income taxes, and since wealth losses whack consumption, that also hurts their coffers.
Adding net wealth to the model (green line) yields an interesting result: it explains little of the gap in the early 2000s recession but most of it in the recent downturn. My guess would be that has a lot to do with the scope and depth of the wealth losses. The stock market crash that precipitated the early 2000s downturn was particularly tough on high-end wealth relative to the housing bust of the Great Recession. In the latter case, you hit a lot more people in the middle class with a negative wealth effect that fed directly into state (and local) revenues.
Again, this means that federal countercyclical policy is not just important to help states through rough patches. It's increasingly important.
This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.
It's mid-day in early March and about a hundred women and girls are squeezed into a round "peace hut" in the Liberian village of Totota with the head of the new U.N. Agency, U.N. Women, looking on. Michelle Bachelet's face draws a look of compassion and concern as the ceremonies begin. A woman, perhaps twenty-something with a child in her arms, begins explaining with graphic hand gestures how her husband beat her; she had bruises and could barely walk afterwards. Her husband looks at the ground until it's his turn to reply. He agrees that he beat her, just not as bad as she says. The female judge moderating the process reprimands him and beseeches peace in the household.
When Bachelet took her first overseas trip in March, she likely surprised many by choosing Liberia, a tiny war-torn country on the West African coast. By many nominal measures, Liberia is an awful place to be a woman. Mothers have a 1 in 20 chance of dying in childbirth during their lifetimes, only about half of females attend secondary school, and about half of rural women marry when they're still technically children. But in one area in particular, Liberia is breaking record books: post-conflict justice, particularly for women, through mechanisms like the Totota peace hut. "I believe that women are very important agents of change, agents of development, agents of peace," Bachelet told me during that trip in March.
Five months later, U.N. Women is releasing its first annual look at the state of females worldwide. And it focuses on exactly that: peace and justice, a sector that underlies many of the areas in which women lag behind -- from property rights, to political participation, to economic opportunity, the report argues. Good laws have to be in place to protect women's rights. But perhaps even more crucially, a strong judicial system has to be able to act when those rights are denied, misappropriated, or trampled. In other words, the courts -- as the enforcers of rights and equality -- are vital to strengthening the position of women in the world.
As U.N. Women's first report, the 169-page document isn't just an annual report. It's also a glimpse into how Bachelet's philosophy about the agency should work: On the key institutions and structures without which everything else falls apart. The judicial system and the rule of law are things that Bachelet knows -- from firsthand experience as Chile's defense minister, and later president -- are key to building just societies. "I have a very deep commitment with justice, and of course women's rights is a matter of justice for me," she told me in March. "We have to do all we could to give them the possibilities and rights that they deserve."
Released July 6, the report begins with a celebration of the last century of progress. One hundred years since the civil rights movement, seven decades since women took to the labor force en mass, and 16 years after then-U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton declared that "women's rights are human rights," the progress is undeniable. As the first annual report of the new agency, U.N. Women, puts it: "the past century has seen a transformation in women's legal rights, with countries in every region expanding the scope of women's legal entitlements." But of course there's a catch: we're really only halfway there. "For most of the world's women," the report continues, "the laws that exist on paper do not translate to equality and justice." Too many promises haven't been followed up with progress on the ground.
This disconnect -- between rules and reality -- is exactly where the report aims to enter the conversation. It begins by identifying where and why women often don't have equal access to justice. Here, the barriers are largely expected: logistical hurdles like cost and distance, poor institutions, cultural taboos, and social stigmas. From there, it looks for answers, and suggests a barrage of solutions from supporting women's groups, to making laws and processes more gender sensitive, to getting women personally involved in the rule of law as policewomen and judges. Post-conflict justice systems get a particular mention for their importance and sensitivity. And the report argues that using quotas to boost the number of female legislators can help ensure that women's rights are on the books.
There are a number of particular sectors where justice systems could do better, the report argues. Economically, women are still paid between 10 and 30 percent less than men who perform the same work worldwide. Legal restrictions on women's work are still common; a third of countries do not allow women in certain industries for reasons of a presumed lack of physical or mental fitness or out of concern for cultural sensitivities. In the Asia Pacific region, the report estimates that an extra $89 billion of annual GDP could be tacked onto -- if only women didn't face so many legal obstacles to work. The percentage of women working in the formal sector worldwide also seems have stalled at about 53 percent, where it has hovered since 1991. Equal treatment of workers is a clear entry point for new and better legal protections.
Reproductive rights are another area of concern noted in the report. Poor women are still far less likely than their richer national counterparts to have a skilled birth attendant present. Unsafe abortion is another plague that has done incredible harm; the report notes that some 20 million unsafe procedures are performed each year, killing 68,000 women. In Africa, Asia, and Latin America, more than 10 percent of all maternal mortality is attributed to illegal abortions. Rights for the HIV positive also have a long way to go. An incredible 63 countries still have laws on their books making the transmission of the disease a crime.
When it comes to the judicial system itself, women are also often treated unequally. Rape investigations and prosecutions are a telling example. An incredibly low proportion of victims ever report their cases to authorities -- a mere 10 percent, compared to 38 percent of robberies. The report also notes a dangerous trend of attrition along the subsequent stages of the judicial process. During each step of the way between, reporting a case and actually convicting a perpetrators, increasing numbers of victims simply drop out, whether for lack of time or funds, social or institutional barriers, or trouble with the investigation itself.
One thing that may help remedy the lack of justice for sexual crimes, at least at the early stages of such cases, is having women in positions of authority in the police and justice sector. In Liberia, for example, reporting rates for crimes against women went up in areas where an all-women brigade of U.N. peacekeepers was deployed. Unfortunately, there is long way to go in making this a global possibility: women today represent just 9 percent of all global police officers and 27 percent of judges.
On the subject of post-conflict justice in particular, U.N. Women is keen to emphasize the importance of gender sensitive law. The good news here is that recent years have seen an incredible de-stigmatization -- at least on an international level -- of sexual crimes. Whereas the Nurembourg trials after World War II skirted the issue (even though 2 million women were raped), the International Criminal Court, operational since 2002, has issued 23 indictments -- and 12 of them have contained charges of sexual crimes. The bad news, as with many sectors of justice, is that women still face a host of challenges in pursuing justice on the ground. Just one barrier: "Women's rights advocates report that some international investigators avoid pursuing these charges, citing reasons such as lack of evidence and women's reluctance to testify about rape."
In all of these challenges, U.N. Women is not likely itself going to be the actor of change, something that the report is conscious of throughout. But what it can do is offer the standards, the justifications, and the policies that might help. "I try to put myself in a head of government's shoes," Bachelet told me.
"People [should not] have to adjust to the system; the system has to be developed thinking on the people. That's the way I work."
As always, remember that John's book The Influence of Teachers is for sale at Amazon.
Last week in this space, I speculated about the most influential educator in America. Although I put forth more than a half dozen names, most respondents 'voted' for Diane Ravitch, the historian/policymaker/apostate whose book, The Death and Life of the Great American Public School, is a best-seller.
Her landslide victory is not particularly surprising, because she is a Five Star General in the ongoing education wars; her badly outgunned army includes the two teachers unions, Linda Darling-Hammond and a lot of teachers.
The opposing side includes Brian Williams and NBC's Education Nation, Oprah Winfrey, Teach for America, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, charter school supporters, Waiting for Superman and a lot of powerful business and financial leaders.
Add to that list David Brooks, the influential columnist for the New York Times. That's particularly disappointing, because the normally perceptive Brooks seems to have swallowed a questionable argument hook, line and sinker.
At stake in this struggle is nothing less than the direction of public education. (I write about this war extensively in The Influence of Teachers and won't rehash the arguments here.)
Just a few days after Ravitch clinched the election on this blog, Brooks took her to task in harsh terms on the op-ed pages of the Times.
Here's a sample:
She picks and chooses what studies to cite, even beyond the normal standards of people who are trying to make a point. She has come to adopt the party-line view of the most change-averse elements of the teachers' unions: There is no education crisis. Poverty is the real issue, not bad schools. We don't need fundamental reform; we mainly need to give teachers more money and job security.
Brooks acknowledges that Ravitch highlights a fundamental tension in education -- teaching is humane, while testing is mechanistic -- but then accuses her of simply wanting to eliminate testing and accountability.
Having accused Ravitch of intellectual dishonesty, Brooks seems to walk down that same path, with the help of a foil, Whitney Tilson, whom he identifies for his readers as 'the education blogger.' That's the same Whitney Tilson who was a founding member of Teach for America and who now serves on the Board of KIPP New York; the same Whitney Tilson who supports Democrats for Education Reform and who was a major player in the campaign of rumor and innuendo to discredit Linda Darling-Hammond when she was being considered for Secretary of Education. That Whitney Tilson! Even he must have been surprised to be labeled merely as 'the education blogger.'
Brooks approvingly passes along Tilson's observations about test-obsessed schools like KIPP (!) and the Harlem Success Schools, places where students are far more likely to participate in chess, dance and drama than do their counterparts in regular public schools.
Brooks' money line follows:
The places where the corrosive testing incentives have had their worst effect are not in the schools associated with the reformers. They are in the schools the reformers haven't touched. These are the mediocre schools without strong leaders and without vibrant missions.
In Brooks' view, Ravitch is simply wrong: "Ravitch thinks the solution is to get rid of the tests," he writes. "But that way just leads to lethargy and perpetual mediocrity. The real answer is to keep the tests and the accountability but make sure every school has a clear sense of mission, an outstanding principal and an invigorating moral culture that hits you when you walk in the door."
Brooks' conclusion -- if a school teaches to the test, it's the fault of the leaders, not of the test -- may follow logically from his premises, but it's a house of cards, and not just because Ravitch is being painted unfairly. The flaw lies in Brooks (or Tilson's) failure to examine the dominant default model of public education today, which is precisely Ravitch's point: test scores rule. Yes, inspired leaders can trump that thinking, and kids lucky enough to attend one of those schools may well emerge as more than a score.
It's true, as Wendy Kopp of Teach for America asserts, that more winning schools are opening every year, and a body of evidence proves that strong leaders, talented teachers, a powerful sense of mission and coherent curricula like Core Knowledge make a difference. However, the evidence suggests that their success also requires superhuman effort that produces a high burnout rate among teachers and school leaders.
Is this a model for genuine and widespread reform? Let's look at the numbers. We have about 100,000 public schools. Perhaps 5,000 or maybe even 10,000 are defying the odds. At that rate, how long will it take? Where will the thousands and thousands of inspired leaders and teachers come from?
Why do Brooks and others defend a system in which success seems to require superhuman effort? To be blunt, our 'answer factory' approach to education is outmoded and counter-productive in a world that technology has transformed, and continues to transform at an unimaginable rate. What is needed is a major rethinking of the structure of school -- a recasting of the basic operating model.
Pitting Ravitch against Tilson makes for a readable column in the hands of a gifted writer like David Brooks. While I regret his unfair treatment of Ravitch, she has proven time and time again that she can take care of herself. What bothers me more is that Brooks and most observers are missing the larger point.
Which is this: Our public schools are the equivalent of yesterday's pony express. Just as a faster pony express would not be sufficient to deliver the mail today, the "faster horses" that reforms like KIPP, Teach for America and charter schools represent are not in themselves adequate for our 50 million school-age children, nor will they ever be.
I have some thoughts about what truly transformed schools would look like, and I imagine you do as well. Some of these schools already exist, others perhaps only in your imagination. Please share your thoughts on what to do next, not just on how to end this counterproductive 'education war' but also on how to proceed positively.
After News Corp-owned News of the World is heavily criticized and accused of illegal activity, Jeremy Hunt is expected to approve News Corporation owning all shares in BSkyB this Friday, in a move which the BBC business editor says will "generate revenues that would dwarf all rivals, even the BBC". Obviously, this should make any sane person very happy.
I actually quite like empires. Sure, sometimes they become bureaucratic -- the Death Star out of Star Wars, which was essentially just one big laser canon, seemed to have a lot of redundant office space for what it was. And yeah, they might tend towards evil sometimes -- like, say, the Evil Empire out of Star Wars. But if Star Wars has taught me anything (and everything I know about empires I learned from Star Wars, so clearly it did), it's that empires always prevail (nb I have only seen up to The Empire Strikes Back, NO spoilers please). That's why I'm over the moon about that the Culture Secretary is about to make News Corporation an even more colossal media empire than it already was (it owns a third of the British newspaper market), despite heavy criticism leveled at News Corp-owned News of the World this week by the liberal media, who resorted to "facts" and "basic decency" in order to ruin this paper's good name.
It's unlikely News Corp will be surprised by Hunt's decision -- presumably they've been hacking Jeremy Hunt's phone for ages. But also because, as his website puts it, Hunt believes Murdoch "has probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person", and that we "wouldn't be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn't been for him". That's right. A quick look at what's on Sky tonight will show why British TV is the envy of the world -- The Simpsons, America's Next Top Model and old episodes of Hawaii Five-0. All independent, grassroots British projects that Murdoch gave life to, like a big, friendly right-wing hen.
And the non-Murdoch rebels are forgetting the huge concessions News Corp has made: namely, to spin off Sky News into an independent company. The term 'spin off' suggests the relationship between News Corp and Sky News will be minimal, like that between Cheers and Frasier - although, since News Corp will still retain exactly the same percentage of shares in Sky News, it'll be more like if Frasier was set in Boston. In a bar. With the all the same characters as Cheers. And called Cheers.
Now this deal is settled, we can look forward to this media Reich lasting a thousand years -- and if there's talk of 'pro-Tory bias' in News Corp influencing this decision, I say GROW UP and remember the front cover of News Corp-owned The Sun on election day 2010 -- David Cameron, posed a la Obama, with just the word 'HOPE' underneath him.
Either they were comparing Cameron to an inspiring, left wing, and internationally renowned US politician OR to the abstract concept of hope itself. I'd agree with either, but I'd stress The Sun didn't pick that cover because of any bias in News Corp. They literally just typed 'hope' into Google and David Cameron's face came up, and they were so startled by this little-known meaning of the word they made it front page news.
The LAST thing anyone wants is a plurality of opinion and voices in the media. After all, when I said I heard lots of voices in my head, they called me MAD. This government has made the same decision I made -- pick one of those voices and follow it. No matter how INSANE and EVIL publications like News of the World appear to be -- according to "the facts" -- we can rest easy that this noble empire is about to become a lot more powerful, thanks to Jeremy Hunt.
Never has there been a bucket of fried chicken, a slice of greasy pizza, or a juicy double cheeseburger that I wasn't happy to have appear on my plate. I love to eat, and I'm not shy about indulging my enthusiasm for food.
As a first-time candidate for public office, I've quickly realized that just as so many other daily routines take on a life of their own in the context of trying to get elected, chowing down has its own set of rules and realities on the campaign trail.
The primary impact is predictable enough: Candidates eat more, and we eat less sensibly.
Obama's arugula-ism would seem to be the exception; Bill Clinton's donut diving feels much more familiar. So yes, my go-to dress slacks are fitting a bit more snugly.
Recently, three important supporters of my candidacy who all keep very busy schedules separately proposed getting lunch on the same day. I didn't want to risk having to push back any of the meetings for several weeks, so at 11 a.m., I ate bacon and eggs at a breakfast diner. At 12:15 p.m., I sat down at a burger joint for my second lunch of the day and finished just in time to go eat soup and a sandwich at a hip downtown bistro at 1:30 p.m. for lunch #3. (In an attempt at restraint, I ate dinner only twice later that night -- just kidding.)
Another example: Two Saturdays ago, I devoured five hot dogs at three different festivals during the day. It turns out burgers and hotdogs are as common as handshakes on the campaign trail. The gobbling of grilled meat at various community events this past 4th of July weekend practically felt like my patriotic duty.
As I see it, there are three reasons why candidates experience a spike in our caloric consumption.
First, meetings take place over meals. If I could propose talking business or catching up during a jog, I'd be all for it, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
Second, time is always short, and on-the-go eating tends to be less healthy eating. Those five hot-dogs I scarfed down on a recent Saturday probably took a combined three minutes to eat, all done while standing up or in motion.
And third, as a candidate constantly trying to build relationships, when someone offers you something to eat, it's much better to say 'Yes!' than to say 'No.'
Is there any silver lining to such an undisciplined diet?
True, I don't plan to be the most svelte I've ever been come this November's election, but some people have suggested to me that a little bit of extra cushioning creates a more trustworthy aura.
The attitude seems to be: "Good for you if you manage to stay fit and lean, but if you're carrying a few extra pounds, well then, heck, you're one of us!"
I would add that the notion of appetite seems to be an all-too appropriate campaign metaphor.
Staying hungry, figuratively if not literally, is the only way to win.
All those hotdogs later, I'm still looking forward to the next one.
Question: What would billionaire Mark Zuckerberg lose by refusing Chinese demands that he censor Facebook? What would he and his company gain from being more principled?
This came up after reading Christopher Luna's analysis of Google Plus as an alternative to Facebook, Zuckerberg's social networking colossus that boasts more than 600 million users globally.
Google Plus, which launched in beta last week, has been Topic One among the "digerati," who've spent much of the week kicking the tires of Facebook's new competitor and reporting back to followers and friends.
But Luna, a masters student at Harvard Divinity School, looked at the competing services through a different lens.
He wrote that he's come to trust Google more because of its refusal to buckle to Chinese censors:
Google is currently in a power war with China, and Google has made the correct choice in its difficult decision between compromising with a totalitarian government that would exert every pressure possible, legal and illegal, to use the information that we trust to Google to continue its campaign against freedom and dissidence.
Facebook, Cisco and Microsoft have shown themselves to be much more willing to comply with Chinese gatekeepers in order to gain access to the nation's vast marketplace of users.
For Luna, Google's stance on behalf of free speech and human rights should be the deciding factor for social media users.
"The choice here isn't just about business. It's about whether a capitalist economy can show that the bottom line is not the only thing in the world that matters," he writes. "It's about whether a corporation can exist and thrive while standing by principles that support the value of human beings."
In 2011, networked technology has become a megaphone for freedom movements from Tunisia and Yemen to Burma and Vietnam. Yet at the same time new media companies have provided repressive regimes with the means to turn technology against their citizenry -- to spy on communications, censor content and, even, track down dissidents for arrest.
In a more perfect world tech companies that stand up for freedom and justice should naturally be more successful economically. This isn't the way our globalized markets have functioned over the centuries, but perhaps we've reached a point in our newly connected world where principles can lead to profits.
For this to succeed, though, consumers will need to become more engaged in corporate behavior both at home and abroad, and to vote with their wallets (and clicks) for the company that takes the high road.
For Luna, the choice is obvious: "I'd like to see Google win this war [with Facebook], and I know who's side I'm on here. I kind of think that leaving Facebook is one way that we can participate..."
Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts. Every waking moment--and even in our dreams--we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.
Drugs are another means toward this end. Some are illegal; some are stigmatized; some are dangerous--though, perversely, these sets only partially intersect. There are drugs of extraordinary power and utility, like psilocybin (the active compound in "magic mushrooms") and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which pose no apparent risk of addiction and are physically well-tolerated, and yet one can still be sent to prison for their use--while drugs like tobacco and alcohol, which have ruined countless lives, are enjoyed ad libitum in almost every society on earth. There are other points on this continuum--3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or "Ecstasy") has remarkable therapeutic potential, but it is also susceptible to abuse, and it appears to be neurotoxic.[1]
One of the great responsibilities we have as a society is to educate ourselves, along with the next generation, about which substances are worth ingesting, and for what purpose, and which are not. The problem, however, is that we refer to all biologically active compounds by a single term--"drugs"--and this makes it nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the psychological, medical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding their use. The poverty of our language has been only slightly eased by the introduction of terms like "psychedelics" to differentiate certain visionary compounds, which can produce extraordinary states of ecstasy and insight, from "narcotics" and other classic agents of stupefaction and abuse.
Drug abuse and addiction are real problems, of course--the remedy for which is education and medical treatment, not incarceration. In fact, the worst drugs of abuse in the United States now appear to be prescription painkillers, like oxycodone. Should these medicines be made illegal? Of course not. People need to be informed about them, and addicts need treatment. And all drugs--including alcohol, cigarettes, and aspirin--must be kept out of the hands of children.
I discuss issues of drug policy in some detail in my first book, The End of Faith (pp. 158-164), and my thinking on the subject has not changed. The "war on drugs" has been well lost, and should never have been waged. While it isn't explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, I can think of no political right more fundamental than the right to peacefully steward the contents of one's own consciousness. The fact that we pointlessly ruin the lives of nonviolent drug users by incarcerating them, at enormous expense, constitutes one of the great moral failures of our time. (And the fact that we make room for them in our prisons by paroling murderers and rapists makes one wonder whether civilization isn't simply doomed.)
I have a daughter who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that she chooses her drugs wisely, but a life without drugs is neither foreseeable, nor, I think, desirable. Someday, I hope she enjoys a morning cup of tea or coffee as much as I do. If my daughter drinks alcohol as an adult, as she probably will, I will encourage her to do it safely. If she chooses to smoke marijuana, I will urge moderation.[2] Tobacco should be shunned, of course, and I will do everything within the bounds of decent parenting to steer her away from it. Needless to say, if I knew my daughter would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if she does not try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.
This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers. Undoubtedly, there are people who cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug. It has been many years since I have taken psychedelics, in fact, and my abstinence is borne of a healthy respect for the risks involved. However, there was a period in my early 20's when I found drugs like psilocybin and LSD to be indispensable tools of insight, and some of the most important hours of my life were spent under their influence. I think it quite possible that I might never have discovered that there was an inner landscape of mind worth exploring without having first pressed this pharmacological advantage.
While human beings have ingested plant-based psychedelics for millennia, scientific research on these compounds did not begin until the 1950's. By 1965, a thousand studies had been published, primarily on psilocybin and LSD, many of which attested to the usefulness of psychedelics in the treatment of clinical depression, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), alcohol addiction, and the pain and anxiety associated with terminal cancer. Within a few years, however, this entire field of research was abolished in an effort to stem the spread of these drugs among the general public. After a hiatus that lasted an entire generation, scientific research on the pharmacology and therapeutic value of psychedelics has quietly resumed.
The psychedelics include chemicals like psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and mescaline--all of which powerfully alter cognition, perception, and mood. Most seem to exert their influence through the serotonin system in the brain, primarily by binding to 5-HT2A receptors (though several have affinity for other receptors as well), leading to increased neuronal activity in prefrontal cortex (PFC). While the PFC in turn modulates subcortical dopamine production, the effect of psychedelics appears to take place largely outside dopamine pathways (which might explain why these drugs are not habit forming).
The mere existence of psychedelics would seem to establish the material basis of mental and spiritual life beyond any doubt--for the introduction of these substances into the brain is the obvious cause of any numinous apocalypse that follows. It is possible, however, if not actually plausible, to seize this datum from the other end and argue, and Aldous Huxley did in his classic essay, The Doors of Perception, that the primary function of the brain could be eliminative: its purpose could be to prevent some vast, transpersonal dimension of mind from flooding consciousness, thereby allowing apes like ourselves to make their way in the world without being dazzled at every step by visionary phenomena irrelevant to their survival. Huxley thought that if the brain were a kind of "reducing valve" for "Mind at Large," this would explain the efficacy of psychedelics: They could simply be a material means of opening the tap.
Unfortunately, Huxley was operating under the erroneous assumption that psychedelics decrease brain activity. However, modern techniques of neuroimaging have shown that these drugs tend to increase activity in many regions of the cortex (and in subcortical structures as well). Still, the action of these drugs does not rule out dualism, or the existence of realms of mind beyond the brain--but then nothing does. This is one of the problems with views of this kind: They appear to be unfalsifiable.[3]
Of course, the brain does filter an extraordinary amount of information from consciousness. And, like many who have taken these drugs, I can attest that psychedelics certainly throw open the gates. Needless to say, positing the existence of a "Mind at Large" is more tempting in some states of consciousness than in others. And the question of which view of reality we should privilege is, at times, worth considering. But these drugs can also produce mental states that are best viewed in clinical terms as forms of psychosis. As a general matter, I believe we should be very slow to make conclusions about the nature of the cosmos based upon inner experience -- no matter how profound these experiences seem.
However, there is no question that the mind is vaster and more fluid than our ordinary, waking consciousness suggests. Consequently, it is impossible to communicate the profundity (or seeming profundity) of psychedelic states to those who have never had such experiences themselves. It is, in fact, difficult to remind oneself of the power of these states once they have passed.
Many people wonder about the difference between meditation (and other contemplative practices) and psychedelics. Are these drugs a form of cheating, or are they the one, indispensable vehicle for authentic awakening? They are neither. Many people don't realize that all psychoactive drugs modulate the existing neurochemistry of the brain--either by mimicking specific neurotransmitters or by causing the neurotransmitters themselves to be more active. There is nothing that one can experience on a drug that is not, at some level, an expression of the brain's potential. Hence, whatever one has experienced after ingesting a drug like LSD is likely to have been experienced, by someone, somewhere, without it.
However, it cannot be denied that psychedelics are a uniquely potent means of altering consciousness. If a person learns to meditate, pray, chant, do yoga, etc., there is no guarantee that anything will happen. Depending on his aptitude, interest, etc., boredom could be the only reward for his efforts. If, however, a person ingests 100 micrograms of LSD, what will happen next will depend on a variety of factors, but there is absolutely no question that something will happen. And boredom is simply not in the cards. Within the hour, the significance of his existence will bear down upon our hero like an avalanche. As Terence McKenna[4] never tired of pointing out, this guarantee of profound effect, for better or worse, is what separates psychedelics from every other method of spiritual inquiry. It is, however, a difference that brings with it certain liabilities.
Ingesting a powerful dose of a psychedelic drug is like strapping oneself to a rocket without a guidance system. One might wind up somewhere worth going--and, depending on the compound and one's "set and setting," certain trajectories are more likely than others. But however methodically one prepares for the voyage, one can still be hurled into states of mind so painful and confusing as to be indistinguishable from psychosis. Hence, the terms "psychotomimetic" and "psychotogenic" that are occasionally applied to these drugs.
I have visited both extremes on the psychedelic continuum. The positive experiences were more sublime than I could have ever imagined or than I can now faithfully recall. These chemicals disclose layers of beauty that art is powerless to capture and for which the beauty of Nature herself is a mere simulacrum. It is one thing to be awestruck by the sight of a giant redwood and to be amazed at the details of its history and underlying biology. It is quite another to spend an apparent eternity in egoless communion with it. Positive psychedelic experiences often reveal how wondrously at ease in the universe a human being can be--and for most of us, normal waking consciousness does not offer so much as a glimmer of these deeper possibilities.
People generally come away from such experiences with a sense that our conventional states of consciousness obscure and truncate insights and emotions that are sacred. If the patriarchs and matriarchs of the world's religions experienced such states of mind, many of their claims about the nature of reality can make subjective sense. The beautific vision does not tell you anything about the birth of the cosmos--but it does reveal how utterly transfigured a mind can be by a full collision with the present moment.
But as the peaks are high, the valleys are deep. My "bad trips" were, without question, the most harrowing hours I have ever suffered--and they make the notion of hell, as a metaphor if not a destination, seem perfectly apt. If nothing else, these excruciating experiences can become a source of compassion. I think it would be impossible to have any sense of what it is like to suffer from mental illness without having briefly touched its shores.
At both ends of the continuum time dilates in ways that cannot be described--apart from saying that these experiences can seem eternal. I have had sessions, both positive and negative, in which any knowledge that I had ingested a drug had been entirely extinguished, and all memories of my past along with it. Full immersion in the present moment, to this degree, is synonymous with the feeling that one has always been, and will always be, in precisely this condition. Depending on the character of one's experience at that point, notions of salvation and damnation do not seem hyperbolic. In my experience, Blake's line about beholding "eternity in an hour" neither promises, nor threatens, too much.
In the beginning, my experiences with psilocybin and LSD were so positive that I could not believe a bad trip was possible. Notions of "set and setting," admittedly vague, seemed sufficient to account for this. My mental set was exactly as it needed to be--I was a spiritually serious investigator of my own mind--and my setting was generally one of either natural beauty or secure solitude.
I cannot account for why my adventures with psychedelics were uniformly pleasant until they weren't--but when the doors to hell finally opened, they appear to have been left permanently ajar. Thereafter, whether or not a trip was good in the aggregate, it generally entailed some harrowing detour on the path to sublimity. Have you ever traveled, beyond all mere metaphors, to the Mountain of Shame and stayed for a thousand years? I do not recommend it.
(Pokhara, Nepal)
On my first trip to Nepal, I took a rowboat out on Phewa Lake in Pokhara, which offers a stunning view of the Annapurna range. It was early morning, and I was alone. As the sun rose over the water, I ingested 400 micrograms of LSD. I was 20 years old and had taken the drug at least ten times previously. What could go wrong?
Everything, as it turns out. Well, not everything--I didn't drown. And I have a vague memory of drifting ashore and of being surrounded by a group of Nepali soldiers. After watching me for a while, as I ogled them over the gunwale like a lunatic, they seemed on the verge of deciding what to do with me. Some polite words of Esperanto, and a few, mad oar strokes, and I was off shore and into oblivion. So I suppose that could have ended differently.
But soon there was no lake or mountains or boat--and if I had fallen into the water I am pretty sure there would have been no one to swim. For the next several hours my mind became the perfect instrument of self-torture. All that remained was a continuous shattering and terror for which I have no words.
These encounters take something out of you. Even if drugs like LSD are biologically safe, the potential for extremely unpleasant and destabilizing experiences presents its own risks. I believe I was positively affected for weeks and months by my good trips, and negatively affected by the bad ones. Given these roulette-like odds, one can only recommend these experiences with caution.
While meditation can open the mind to a similar range of conscious states, they are reached far less haphazardly. If LSD is like being strapped to rocket, learning to meditate is like gently raising a sail. Yes, it is possible, even with guidance, to wind up someplace terrifying--and there are people who probably shouldn't spend long periods in intensive practice. But the general effect of meditation training is of settling ever more fully into one's own skin, and suffering less, rather than more there.
As I discussed in The End of Faith, I view most psychedelic experiences as potentially misleading. Psychedelics do not guarantee wisdom. They merely guarantee more content. And visionary experiences, considered in their totality, appear to me to be ethically neutral. Therefore, it seems that psychedelic ecstasy must be steered toward our personal and collective well-being by some other principle. As Daniel Pinchbeck pointed out in his highly entertaining book, Breaking Open the Head, the fact that both the Mayans and the Aztecs used psychedelics, while being enthusiastic practitioners of human sacrifice, makes any idealistic link between plant-based shamanism and an enlightened society seem terribly naive.
As I will discuss in future essays, the form of transcendence that appears to link directly to ethical behavior and human well-being is the transcendence of egoity in the midst of ordinary waking consciousness. It is by ceasing to cling to the contents of consciousness--to our thoughts, moods, desires, etc.--that we make progress. Such a project does not, in principle, require that we experience more contents.[5] The freedom from self that is both the goal and foundation of "spiritual" life is coincident with normal perception and cognition--though, admittedly, this can be difficult to realize.
The power of psychedelics, however, is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime. As is often the case, William James said it about as well as words permit[6] :
One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.
(The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 388)
NOTES:
A wide literature now suggests that MDMA damages serotonin-producing neurons and decreases levels of serotonin in the brain. Here is the tip of the iceberg: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. ↩
What is moderation? Let's just say that I've never met a person who smokes marijuana every day who I thought wouldn't benefit from smoking less (and I've never met someone who has never tried it who I thought wouldn't benefit from smoking more).↩
Physicalism, by contrast, could be easily falsified. If science ever established the existence of ghosts, or reincarnation, or any other phenomenon which would place the human mind (in whole or in part) outside the brain, physicalism would be dead. The fact that dualists can never say what would count as evidence against their views makes this ancient philosophical position very difficult to distinguish from religious faith.↩
Terence McKenna is one person I regret not getting to know. Unfortunately, he died from brain cancer in 2000, at the age of 53. His books are well worth reading, and I have recommended several below, but he was, above all, an amazing speaker. It is true that his eloquence often led him to adopt positions which can only be described (charitably) as "wacky," but the man was undeniably brilliant and always worth listening to. ↩
I should say, however, that there are psychedelic experiences that I have not had, which appear to deliver a different message. Rather than being states in which the boundaries of the self are dissolved, some people have experiences in which the self (in some form) appears to be transported elsewhere. This phenomenon is very common with the drug DMT, and it can lead its initiates to some very startling conclusions about the nature of reality. More than anyone else, Terence McKenna was influential in bringing the phenomenology of DMT into prominence.
DMT is unique among psychedelics for a several reasons. Everyone who has tried it seems to agree that it is the most potent hallucinogen available (not in terms of the quantity needed for an effective dose, but in terms of its effects). It is also, paradoxically, the shortest acting. While the effects of LSD can last ten hours, the DMT trance dawns in less than a minute and subsides in ten. One reason for such steep pharmacokinetics seems to be that this compound already exists inside the human brain, and it is readily metabolized by monoaminoxidase. DMT is in the same chemical class as psilocybin and the neurotransmitter serotonin (but, in addition to having an affinity for 5-HT2A receptors, it has been shown to bind to the sigma-1 receptor and modulate Na+ channels). Its function in the human body remains mysterious. Among the many mysteries and insults presented by DMT, it offers a final mockery of our drug laws: Not only have we criminalized naturally occurring substances, like cannabis; we have criminalized one of our own neurotransmitters.
Many users of DMT report being thrust under its influence into an adjacent reality where they are met by alien beings who appear intent upon sharing information and demonstrating the use of inscrutable technologies. The convergence of hundreds of such reports, many from first-time users of the drug who have not been told what to expect, is certainly interesting. It is also worth noting these accounts are almost entirely free of religious imagery. One appears far more likely to meet extraterrestrials or elves on DMT than traditional saints or angels. As I have not tried DMT, and have not had an experience of the sort that its users describe, I don't know what to make of any of this. ↩
Of course, James was reporting his experiences with nitrous oxide, which is an anesthetic. Other anesthetics, like ketamine hydrochloride and phencyclidine hydrochloride (PCP), have similar effects on mood and cognition at low doses. However, there are many differences between these drugs and classic psychedelics--one being that high doses of the latter do not lead to general anesthesia. ↩
Recently, I stepped out of bed and managed to double-stub my toe on a computer printer and a lamp, both of which were on the floor next to my bed for some unknown reason. In college, a lamp and printer on the floor would have been part of my preferred design aesthetic. But now, living in a New York apartment with a wife and two kids, this clutter meant our two-bedroom was bursting at the seams. It was time once again to consider a move to the suburbs.
The city vs. suburb debate comes up a lot in our household. Sometimes it starts when we watch one of those family movies that romanticize suburban life, with kids playing on front lawns, riding bikes and having a big dog. Other times it is ignited because of frustrations regarding the quality of public schools and the expense of private schools in the city. And, finally, as with my stubbed toes, it is raised based on the need for more space, and the fact that we just cannot afford more metropolitan square feet.
My position on city vs. suburban living shifts based on how much weight I place on my own life experiences. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs made famous in John Hughes' movies, such as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Sixteen Candles" and "Home Alone," and I have fond memories of playing up and down my suburban street as a kid. But as an adult I became a city dweller and have enjoyed the conveniences, cultural lifestyle and energy available here.
While I complain about the compressed space of city apartments, I am generally more pro-city than pro-suburban living. The central point of my pro-city rant is that if a person lives in a suburb and works in the city, one wastes several hours commuting from point A to point B and back again. Generation after generation of hard-working parents leave the city for the suburbs to obtain a bigger house and better life for the family that they never see or experience because they are always commuting and working.
The pro-city argument has further layers, like the benefits of not having to live a car-dependent lifestyle. My wife and I do not own a car, and we do not need to own one in New York, where there are plenty of alternatives such as walking, trains, buses, taxis and short-term rental cars for all travel situations. I would like to avoid the reality that a colleague of mine -- who lives in a nearby suburb -- recently recounted. He said he had spent a total of three hours outside of his car over the weekend because he was spending the rest of the time shuttling kids to games and events, sitting in traffic and running errands.
One of the constant support arguments made by the pro-city living brigade is that living in a city offers more access to culture and diversity. As a parent I would say this argument is overstated, simply because as a working adult you do not always have the free time to take advantage of the artistic happenings in a city. But the fact remains the cultural diversity surrounds you, and there is greater ease of access, which manifests itself on occasions like a rainy Saturday when in New York you are able to go to the Natural History Museum to look at dinosaurs without making the outing into a large excursion.
While I like city living, the challenges of urban family life weaken my resolve. Critical issues and economic realities related to children significantly challenge the pro-city argument. City public schools face a constant barrage of quality and funding concerns. The private school alternative is ridiculously expensive, some charging as much as $40,000 per year. Even at that inflated price, private schools remain fiercely competitive and are able to be highly selective, so there is no guarantee that if you pay you will gain entry. Add to the school fees the high costs for after-school and weekend sports, arts and language programs. Property and the cost of goods and services also seem to all cost more in the city. City living may be better in many respects, but does it offer better value for money?
The debate between city life and suburban life rages on in my house. The lamp and printer blocking my path in the bedroom were given to a friend and we remain city mice -- for now. All of the challenges that raise the city vs. suburb discussion continue to fester. The societal challenge of finding a new life and work system that allow the family to remain connected and eliminate long commutes, while also providing affordable, quality education and housing, has yet to fully emerge. Technologies that make it possible to work virtually appear to offer at least part of a cure, allowing some who took the suburban plunge to reduce commuting. Some cities are trying to improve the cost and quality of education that perhaps would remove some of the pressure to leave for the suburbs in the first place. And many companies are offering more flexibility in how, when and where they expect their employees to work. Technological innovations, as well as bureaucratic and operational changes, provide promising avenues for further development, but the commute to the solution is a long, slow journey.
Credibility is a fraught issue these days. Playing out in one courtroom is the debacle of the discredited accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. In another is the Casey Anthony trial with its holiday parade of potential liars. Maybe you are confident that you are a terrific lie detector -- you are sure you can separate the trustworthy from the slime. Surprise! More than a dozen studies have shown that there is no link between confidence and skill. If you think you are a great human lie detector, you are no more or less likely to actually be great than if you think you are a terrible lie detector.
In my decades of doing research on deception and studying the work of others, I've found a whole raft of ways our judgments of credibility can go astray. Here's a sampling.
Looks can kill -- your better judgment. Some people have a certain "look" or manner about them. The lucky ones just seem honest and trustworthy all the time, even when they are lying. The less fortunate ones characteristically come across as untrustworthy, even when they are telling the truth. If you truly are a discerning lie detector, you should not be fooled by a person's characteristic look. Instead, you should be able to tell in any particular instance whether that person is lying or telling the truth. So can you? If you are an ordinary person, with no special experience or training in the detection of deception, the answer is no. Faced with a person whose typical look is inconsistent with their actual truthfulness, you are more likely to go with the look. But what if you work in a government security and intelligence agency, you have had formal training in the detection of deception and you have more than 14 years of on-the-job experience trying to detect lies? If a person's characteristic look is consistent with their truthfulness, you will be unbeatable. But if the look is inconsistent, you will do worse than college students and worse than fellow agents with far less experience. Check out the stunningly-poor accuracy scores and read more about the studies by Tim Levine, in this post.)
Love can blind you. The romantically involved like to think that they, more so than anyone else, know when their partner is lying. And why not? Many couples do spend a tremendous amount of time with each other. Well here's why not: You don't want to think that your partner is lying, especially not to you! In a clever dissertation described briefly here, Eric Anderson asked one member of each of 100 couples the dreaded question, "Do you think that person over there is attractive?" Who was best at recognizing when the person was lying -- the person's partner or a complete stranger? Okay, I set you up for that. The answer is a complete stranger.
Imitation may be flattering, but it doesn't make you a better lie detector. Have you noticed how two people sometimes seem totally in sync as they interact with each other? One person is tilting her head, and the other seems to be mirroring that movement. Facial expressions, speech rates and patterns and even accents are also subject to this sort of mimicking, which most of the time is probably unconscious. In many ways, mimicking is a good thing -- people who mirror each other's movements often feel closer and more understood. But they are actually worse at knowing whether the other person is lying or telling the truth. The research by Marielle Stel and her colleagues is here.
Be happy, get duped. It is nice to be in a good mood. Who wants to be a crank or a Debbie Downer? When it comes to ferreting out liars, though, Debbie rules. People who are in a bad mood are more skeptical of others. In some ways, they are also more accurate at separating the liars from the truth-tellers. The research by Joseph Forgas and Rebekah East is here.
For years, my colleagues and I collected people's stories of the most serious lies in their lives, described here. Our sense was that they did not fully appreciate the extent to which their own qualities tempted other people to lie to them. Often, those qualities that attracted lies were very positive ones. People who are beautiful, graceful, charming and sexy are often the targets of lies told by others who are trying to impress them. People with power and authority elicit lies, too. That may seem obvious in the abstract, but when you are the person hearing how wonderful you are, you may find it more comforting to believe that your flatterers are truthful and wise, than to realize that they are just shameless sycophants.
There are plenty of people -- including a number within my own family -- who were convinced they would not see the election of a black president in their lifetime. Having lived through the indignities of segregation, I can certainly understand how the thought of a black man becoming the most powerful elected official in the country simply seemed beyond the realm of possibility. But President Obama's first few years in office appear to have confirmed a fundamental shift in the role identity politics play in a candidate's so-called electability. Racial identity is no longer the greatest barrier to elected office. Religious identity is.
I first began to ponder this shift during the 2008 presidential election when I realized that I seemed to be spending nearly as much time on various television programs discussing the impact that rumors regarding President Obama's religious identity might have on his campaign, as I did discussing the impact that his racial identity may have. It seemed to be the ultimate irony. A viable black candidate gets a real shot at the presidency and being black ends up being the least of his problems. Now before I get inundated with angry e-mails, I want to be clear. I am in no way suggesting that President Obama's race does not matter nor am I saying that it did not cost him any votes and has not inspired some of the vitriol directed at him. I am saying, however, that it may not matter as much as the fact that his middle name is Hussein and his father is from Kenya and in the minds of nearly a quarter of the population that means President Obama must be a Muslim, and in their eyes unfit for the presidency.
It was this realization that in part inspired my new book. (Warning: Shameless plug on the way.) In a desperate attempt to use a different part of my brain for a change, I had been in discussions with my agent about doing a fun, lighthearted novel about what happens to a group of friends when one of them decides to run for president. And just for kicks, yes the candidate was going to be handsome, charismatic, in his forties and African-American. But the more the attacks on candidate Obama's religious identity escalated, the more fascinated I became with this idea of religious identity as one of the last remaining acceptable forms of prejudice, and realized that subject would make a far more interesting book. For instance, today even a staunch conservative who is opposed to gay marriage would be inclined to choose their words very carefully in explaining why he or she may be unwilling to vote for an openly gay candidate. But if Tom Cruise ran for President there are plenty of people who would have no problem citing Scientology as a reason they were choosing not to support him.
Recently, rising GOP star Herman Cain has drawn criticism, but just as many cheers for his tough stance on Muslim Americans in a potential Cain presidential administration. By the same token much of the hostility directed at President Obama has been conveniently cloaked in this strange denunciation of one form of prejudice, coupled with the embrace of another kind. The argument goes something like this: "I don't dislike him because he's black. But I do believe he's a Muslim." As if that's not quite so bad.
But Muslims are not the only religious group still facing rampant prejudice on the campaign trail. More than fifty years after President Kennedy delivered his landmark speech on his religious identity, I had a relative who said during the 2004 election that they were "uncomfortable" with the fact that Sen. John Kerry is a practicing Catholic. (If they happen to read this piece, Thanksgiving dinner is going to be awfully interesting.) And while the mainstream media and his primary opponents have focused on "Obamneycare" as being former Governor Mitt Romney's primary Achilles heel this election, the reality is that being Mormon remains one of his greatest potential liabilities--as unfair as that may be.
And then of course there's Sen. Joe Lieberman. Though these days he may be better known for political liabilities of his own making (such as campaigning with Sen. John McCain over the nominee from the party he spent most of his career with during the 2008 election), his religious identity was a topic of discussion during the 2000 election when he was Vice-president Gore's running mate. And not always a topic of discussion in a good way.
While hate groups expend a lot of time and energy hating people of all colors, shapes and sizes for all sorts of kooky reasons, the two groups that have long rankled the David Dukes of the world the most are blacks and Jews. This disturbing place of distinction as among the most persecuted groups in history has resulted in a unique bond between the two communities--a bond that was strengthened during the civil rights movement. Many Jewish Americans fought alongside black Americans in the struggle for equality. (Among them Sen. Joe Lieberman who was a Freedom Rider.) Two of the movement's most high profile martyrs, students Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were Jewish Americans. Their deaths, alongside African-American volunteer, James Chaney, are credited with being a pivotal turning point in transforming how the rest of the country viewed what had long been perceived as a "Southern problem." (The story of their disappearance and murder inspired the film "Mississippi Burning.")
So after a lot of reflection I decided to write a book about this bond, specifically about a black candidate, whose religious and racial identity is shaped by being raised by Jewish parents and how his atypical background impacts his run for the presidency. (Not to worry. There's still the fun storyline involving the candidate's friends for you beach readers out there.)
Here are the questions I'd like to challenge readers, and commenters on this site, to consider and hopefully discuss, perhaps even debate. How close do you honestly think our country is to electing a non-practicing, non-traditional Christian* as president -- Jewish, Muslim, Mormon or otherwise? Do you think religious diversity matters in our political process? (Click here to see a list of The Most Influential Non-Practicing Christian Politicians in American Politics.)
And how close do you think we are to electing a dual-or triple -- minority as president? For instance could President Obama have been elected were he a black candidate and a non-practicing Christian? Could a black, Hispanic or Jewish female be elected?
I recently noted in an interview that while I don't consider my book, "The GQ Candidate" to be based on President Obama, per se, I do know that had my agent tried selling a book about a viable black presidential candidate five years ago, she and I would have been laughed out of the office of every major publisher out there. But now, the idea of a black president is no longer laughable. My hope is that one day soon the idea that Americans are willing to elect a president who may not agree with all of their religious views, may not be considered so laughable either.
*Note: The term non-traditional Christian is used to denote that many Mormons identify themselves as Christian, even if this label is challenged by Christians from other denominations. This piece originally appeared on TheLoop21.com for which Goff is a Contributing Editor.
Brain fitness ranks as one of the hottest topics at the water cooler these days. Suddenly everyone wants to learn more about what we can do to keep our minds sharp and stay in top intellectual form at the office.
Although the science of brain health remains young, research clearly indicates there is much we can do to improve our everyday memory. Building better brain health can help us boost work skills such as recalling important client information, learning training materials or just keeping track of key documents. It can also lower our risk of serious memory loss.
While many of us want to improve our brain health, we aren't always sure what exactly we need to do, or -- more likely -- simply can't imagine putting one more "must-do" item on our list. Improving your brain fitness doesn't have to be complex, expensive or even time-consuming. The best approach to improving our brain health is one that reflects the current science and blueprints a plan that is practical and actionable. In fact, there are plenty of things we can do to prime our mind while sitting right at our desks.
Here are eight things you can do right now to boost your brain power at work. You can do them all in just five minutes or spend more time on them over the course of the day. All are geared to give your brain an awesome on-the-job workout.
Republicans won't take yes for an answer in the debt ceiling negotiations. As conservative columnist David Brooks writes in the New York Times, this should be the "mother of all no brainers."
Republicans have achieved everything they might have imagined at the beginning of the process and more. Yet they still refuse even the smallest of compromises to accept victory.
Brooks correctly concludes that the reason is that the "Republican Party may no longer be a normal party." Instead it is "infected by a faction that is more psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative." But this faction is led not by backbench insurgents, but by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. The faction has taken over the whole.
Brooks aptly summarizes their extremism: they "do not accept the logic of compromise;" "have no sense of moral decency;" "have no economic theory worthy of the name." If Republican adults don't take control, Brooks concludes, "independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right." Pretty strong stuff from a card carrying, self-professed conservative.
Then Brooks proves he has no clue about Democrats. Most hilariously, he argues that: "Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too."
Would that it were so.
In fact, Republicans have brazenly turned the negotiations into a circus. Now Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell and a band of Republican Senators demand a vote in both chambers on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, with a ceiling of spending arbitrarily set at 18% of GDP, with super-majorities required to raise that or to raise taxes. This is a level of spending that dates back to the 1960s before Medicare and Medicaid, with a smaller population and before the aging of the baby boomers. It is a laughable level that would require more draconian cuts than those in the Republican budget that garroted Medicare and slashed Medicaid.
But we know why Republicans keep raising the ransom they are demanding as a price for not blowing up the economy. We know why they won't take yes for an answer. They are confident that the president will make ever more concessions, and it doesn't take much imagination to understand why they think that.
But contrary to Brooks, the unanswered question is why Democrats aren't saying NO. It will take Democratic agreement to get the measure out of the Senate -- and most probably Democratic votes to get it out of the House. But while Republicans have continued to impose ever more demands, Democrats have been AWOL, absent without leave. Other than Senator Bernie Sanders, they've said little publicly, drawn no lines in the sand, set no minimum demands. They've acceded to the president's request that they leave the negotiations to the White House. They haven't decided to be fanatics; they haven't even decided to display a pulse.
It's worth recapitulating the retreats already made. The most sensible position, supported by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at the beginning of this process, is simply to lift the debt ceiling, itself a procedural anomaly, with no preconditions simply to cover the debt that the nation is committed to by measures passed into law by the Congress.
Instead, congressional Republicans said they'd blow up the economy and refuse to lift the debt ceiling unless there was significant deficit reduction as part of the deal. The president conceded that; Democrats said nothing.
Then Republicans arbitrarily demanded that there be $1 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years for every $1 the debt limit was raised. The president conceded that; Democrats said nothing.
Then Republicans said there could be no increase in tax rates -- not on hedge fund billionaires who pay a lower tax rate than their chauffeurs, not a surcharge on bankers who got bailed out, not on corporations sitting on $2 trillion in cash. The president conceded that; Democrats remained mute.
Then Republicans said, needless to say, no new taxes -- no taxes, for example, on Wall Street's financial gaming which would simply be good policy The president conceded that; Democrats... sigh.
Then Republicans demanded cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, largely to help them off the limb they put themselves on by passing a budget that would end Medicare as we know it and slash Medicaid. The president conceded that; Democrats sounded a remorseful concern.
The reported deal now on the table amounts to $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including $200 to $300 billion in cuts from Medicare and Medicaid over 10 years. The president sought about $150 billion in loophole closings -- oil company subsidies, private jet depreciation rates, and that there be some allocation of the spending cuts to the military. That's $150 billion over 10 years; $15 billion a year in new revenue.
Not one to one spending cuts to tax hikes, despite the fact that Bush tax cuts dug much of the hole we are in. Not half of the spending cuts from the defense budget that has been bloated over the last decade. Instead 10 to 1 in spending cuts to tax loopholes closed, and the Pentagon cuts left to the measured judgment of Republican appropriators in the House.
And Republicans said no. They want no loophole closing which they term tax hikes. And no allocation to the Pentagon. And oh, by the way, a prior vote on a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Next week, they'll demand prayer in the school, exile of Elizabeth Warren for championing consumers, and the president's first born.
And Democrats say -- nothing. If Republicans say yes to what is apparently on the table, the president and his Democratic allies will sign onto an agreement that will damage any growth -- for the cuts apparently are to begin in October in a faltering economy, exact greater sacrifice from programs for the vulnerable than from the wealthy, and basically exempt the Pentagon budget, by far the greatest source of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. They will make Gilded Age inequality worse, extend poverty, slow growth, and most likely, increase unemployment. Then they can explain to voters that they are the moderate alternative to Republicans, even though they just cut a deal on the terms of a "faction" that even David Brooks says is bereft of "moral decency."
This is a losers' game, bad for the country, bad for the economy, bad for the possibility of reform vital to this country's future. If Democrats were an organized political party, they would simply say no. No Democratic votes for a deal as imbalanced as the one on the table, one that exacts sacrifice from the vulnerable, cuts programs for the middle class, and exempts the wealthy and the Pentagon. They would demand shared sacrifice. As much in tax revenues from the rich and corporations as cuts in programs for the people; as much in cuts in the Pentagon as cuts from domestic programs. No shared sacrifice; no deal. Not all Democrats would agree -- that goes without saying -- but with a little leadership, enough could sign on to bring the circus to a halt. Instead, Harry Reid should introduce a bill to raise the debt limit only to the level required by the budget House Republicans just passed, and announce that Americans should decide in the election which party they trust to figure out how to get under that ceiling.
Of course, Republicans could refuse to pass the debt ceiling required by their own budget. They could refuse to leave the backrooms and take their case to the voters in the election. They could choose to endanger the full faith and credit of the United States to get their way. Brooks suggests they may be so extreme as to end up there. Personally, I'd expect that the combined weight of Wall Street, corporate and country club America would get them to change their minds rather quickly.
But what's the alternative? Cave to an unjust and extreme set of demands? We know where that leads. If the adults finally get the rest to say "yes," then what Brooks calls the "faction" will then turn their attention to next year's budget -- the fiscal year begins in October -- threatening to shut the government down -- as they did last December -- unless the president agrees to even deeper cuts. And they will use the debt ceiling deal as the minimal template for any agreement -- no tax hikes on the wealthy, all spending cuts from programs for the vulnerable. Why would they not do that? The president surely will negotiate. And the Democrats? The Democrats?
Face it. We live in two nations, sharply divided by an enormous economic chasm between the super-rich and everyone else. This should be an obvious fact of life for most Americans. Just read the story in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal headlined "Profits Thrive in Weak Recovery." Or the recent New York Times story pointing out "that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million," a 23 percent gain over the year before.
In the midst of a jobless recovery, those same corporations are sitting on more than $2 trillion in reserves, refusing to invest in this country, as increasing percentages of their profits are garnered in tax-sheltered operations abroad. And the bankers who caused the economic meltdown have turned against President Barack Obama, who saved them; instead they favor a tea-party-dominated Republican Party that seeks to limit any restraint on corporate greed while destroying the ability of state and federal governments to bring some measure of relief to ordinary folk.
The whole point of the tea party is to focus concern over our stagnant economy on something called "big government" while ignoring the big corporations that have bought the government as an accessory to their marketing strategies. Big government is big precisely because it now exists primarily to make the world safe for multinational capitalism, whether through a bloated defense budget, trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or monetary policies that serve the interests of the largest companies.
It was their lobbyists who got Congress to end sensible regulations of financial shenanigans, and now, with the new tea party members of Congress as their most stalwart allies, they are yanking the teeth from the very mild regulations that Obama got through the last Congress. As the Associated Press reported: "Congressional Republicans are greeting the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's financial overhaul law by trying to weaken it, nibble by nibble."
It is nothing short of demagogic for the Republicans to be complaining about the debt when it was the radical deregulatory policies that they pursued which caused all that governmental red ink in the first place. What a hoax to pretend that teachers' pensions or environmental protections are responsible for a debt that increased by 50 percent as a direct consequence of the banking collapse. Yet they want to gut even the tepid regulations that became law under the Obama administration, foaming at the mouth about sensible regulation as job killing when it is the uncontrolled greed of Wall Street that is at the root of our high unemployment.
Congressional Republicans are cutting funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as if those already underfunded agencies are centers of anti-business radicalism. The CFTC is run by former Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler, who, back when he was in the Clinton Treasury Department serving under another onetime Goldman leader, Robert Rubin, teamed up with Republicans in Congress to gut financial regulation. He is one of the Obama regulators who has managed to delay even the minor controls that the Dodd-Frank law requires for the still wildly out-of-control $600 trillion derivatives market.
What a joke that the tea party assertion that radicals have taken over the Obama government is embraced even by lobbyists for Goldman Sachs, whose former executives have populated the Obama administration as widely as they did the two previous administrations. All they are missing this time around is that they didn't get to have one of their own named as treasury secretary, as was the case in both the Clinton and Bush cabinets.
This week, the Los Angeles Timesreported on Goldman's renewed lobbying efforts in Washington aimed at watering down what remains of the promise of Dodd-Frank. True to Washington tradition, Goldman has hired Michael Paese, a former top staffer for the "liberal" Rep. Barney Frank to head its Washington operation, which last year spent $4.6 million lobbying Congress to soften the bill, a task now made far easier with Goldman's tea party allies in the new Republican-dominated House. As the Times noted, "Goldman has spent much of its money on hired guns from major Washington lobbying firms, including former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.)."
Between the faux populism of the tea party and the army of sellout ex-congressional staffers and politicians from both parties, the Washington fix is in. Short of hitting it big on a lottery ticket, the vast majority of Americans are sentenced to a future of lowered expectations, insurmountable personal debt and dismal job prospects.
They may not know it, however, thanks to the constant propaganda from a corporate culture dominated by images of a classless nation in which all consume the delights of the American dream, from the perfect smartphone to the perfect pill for bladder control, while merrily hacking away on the perfectly manicured golf course of one's fantasies.
LONDON - I am delighted to be in London today for the first Huffington Post launch outside of North America: Welcome to HuffPost UK.
Britain has always held a very special place in my heart. I started (and finished) college here. I started (and finished) my first serious love affair here. I didn't move away from my childhood home in Greece as much as I moved to Britain. What started the whole thing was a magazine article on Cambridge I saw as a teenager. I looked at the photos and instantly set my heart on studying there. Everyone thought I was crazy -- except my mother, who completely supported my dream and helped make it a reality. Cambridge was a transformative experience for me. When I arrived, I was a classic fish out of water -- and one who spoke a different language, to boot. But, emulating the Brits I saw around me, I forged ahead, and quickly adapted. I loved what ended up being the decade I lived in the UK, at Cambridge and then in London.
In so many ways, my time in Britain set the course for the rest of my life -- leading all the way, in fact, to the creation of The Huffington Post in May of 2005. My time at the Cambridge Union helped me overcome my fear of public speaking -- and of my thick Greek accent. Becoming president of the Union was the start of many things -- including my first book, as it was a Union debate that brought me to the attention of Reg Davis-Poynter, the British publisher who offered me a contract and set me on the path to becoming a writer. And my London years were shaped by my seven-year relationship with Bernard Levin -- the ending of which was major enough to propel me not only out of the relationship but out of the country. And so it was on to America and the next phase of my life.
And how did Britain also play a key role in the evolution of The Huffington Post? It was July 7, 2005, two months after we'd launched. I was drinking my morning coffee and reading my paper copy of the New York Times, which had a front-page photo of Londoners celebrating the city's winning bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. It was literally yesterday's news. In the meantime, HuffPost not only had the bombings as our news splash but our London-based bloggers weighing in with of-the-moment reactions, bringing home the power and immediacy of real-time, social news.
And these lessons have gone on to become the defining traits of our approach to delivering news, entertainment, opinion, and information. At the core of everything we do are engagement, connection ("social"), and a commitment to real-time coverage.
We are arriving here in the midst of a rich and thriving media culture marked by great innovation. The Guardian's decision to further its commitment to "open journalism" is particularly exciting, as is the masterful use of storytelling to shine a light on important issues, as demonstrated by the Independent's recent piece on the UK's "threatened, isolated, under siege" modern working class.
We look forward to spotlighting and linking to such great stories, driving traffic to them, and fueling conversations around the issues they raise.
The explosive growth of online social networking has fundamentally changed how we consume media. News and entertainment are no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, stories, videos, and slideshows -- we react to them, add to them, talk back to them, and share them. In short, content has become social -- and, on HuffPost, our sections have become digital water coolers.
Our goal is to give our readers a one-stop shop for all the information they need to know -- whether we're reporting on it, curating it from the best sources around the world, or our bloggers are weighing in with their takes on it. All delivered in real time, on every platform (don't forget to download our smartphone and tablet apps!), and using every possible medium.
And we make it easy for you to be able to not only consume what we are offering, but also become an integral part of the stories we are telling by sharing them, liking them, commenting on them, tweeting them, or posting them on Facebook.
At the same time we're embracing the best of the new -- immediacy, transparency, interactivity -- we also embrace the best of the old: fact-checking, accuracy, fairness, and an emphasis on storytelling.
Ever since I read Benjamin Disraeli's classic novel Sybil when I was at Cambridge, I've loved writers who are able to use storytelling to put flesh and blood on statistics and a human face on numbers -- writers who use their gifts and their passion to touch hearts, change minds, and have an impact on our world.
Disraeli wrote Sybil in 1845 as a wakeup call about the horrible state of the British working class and the danger of England disintegrating into "two nations, between whom there is... no sympathy... as if they were inhabitants of different planets." The book became a sensation, and the outrage it provoked propelled fundamental social reforms.
In the 19th century, Disraeli's weapon against the social wrongs in his county, his vehicle for the stories that would arouse his countrymen's common humanity, was a novel. In the 21st century, new media, social platforms, and the explosion of camera phones are arming a new generation of storytellers with new ways of bearing witness to the world around them. In many countries, the revolution may not be televised -- but it will be blogged, tweeted, posted on Facebook, uploaded to YouTube... and, of course, covered on The Huffington Post.
And though the methods for telling our stories may have changed since Disraeli's time, the dangers of disintegrating into two nations are once again all too real. Part of The Huffington Post's mission from the beginning has been to shine a light on the underreported stories of the struggles of working families. And we plan to continue that mission with HuffPost UK, as well.
Part of that will mean chronicling the ongoing story of David Cameron's "Big Society" initiative. In virtually every Western democracy, as trusted institutions of every kind have failed the people, new relationships between citizens and their governments are being worked out. What will this next stage of capitalism be like? Is the Big Society, as Ed Miliband has suggested, a "front for cuts"? Or is it an effort to forge a more robust civic life and a new politics of the common good?
As the Harvard professor Michael Sandel told the Telegraph, "I think it could mark the beginning of a new politics. Whether it will be is an open question. But this idea that markets and the state are NOT the only instruments of the common good -- I find that intriguing and well worth exploring."
And so do we. A big part of the conversation about how to go forward is actually to focus on where we've been. So we'll also be covering, for instance, the attempts by Simon Schama to help revitalize the teaching of history throughout Britain. "Ultimately, history delivers the kind of wisdom that teaches how to live most richly inside a human skin," he said in an interview with HuffPost's Joy Resmovits, running today.
When you're trying to figure out who you're going to be in the future, it helps to know who you've been in the past. "The seeding of amnesia is the undoing of citizenship," Schama writes. And that's because "serious history is about entering the lives of others." Which is another way of saying: empathy, connection, and engagement -- elements at the heart of what makes the Huffington Post what it is.
Part of this editorial vision is putting an end to seeing every issue through the tired frame of right versus left. There is nothing right or left about obsessively covering youth unemployment, or the struggles of working families, or the war in Afghanistan.
Our lifestyle coverage will also be informed by a clear editorial vision: a commitment to redefining success and happiness -- including highlighting ways in which we can "unplug and recharge," and everything you ever wanted to know about sleep (a personal obsession of mine!). The prevailing culture tells us that nothing succeeds like excess, that working 80 hours a week is better than working 70, that being plugged in 24/7 is expected, and that sleeping less and multi-tasking more are an express elevator to the top. Our coverage will beg to differ.
So these are some of the key strands that have always made up the HuffPost DNA -- and will be an integral part of HuffPost UK, which will feature HuffPost's signature blend of news, opinion, entertainment, community, and information -- tailored to British issues and perspectives.
Among the original stories by HuffPost reporters and editors we're featuring today: Tom Zeller looks into the debate on how urban air quality could impact the London Olympics; Michael Calderone examines the impact of British outlets on the U.S. media market; David Wood looks at how the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan will impact British forces there; Will Alden looks at the explosion of credit card usage in the UK; Chris Kirkham reports on how the for-profit higher education industry is gaining a foothold in the UK; Margaret Wheeler Johnson weighs in on the negative impact of Britain's tabloid culture on women; Amy Lee profiles top UK tech CEOs to watch; and Peter Goodman writes about ShoeDazzle, an innovative company coming to the United Kingdom.
Another vital element of HuffPost UK will be our group blog -- a place where some of Britain's most creative and knowledgeable minds, some well-known and some not, weigh in on topics great and small, political and cultural, important or just plain entertaining. In short, everything that makes Britain such a diverse and unique country -- everything that is, to paraphrase Schama's phrase, peculiarly yours, as well as everything that is shared by our two countries.
Today's blog lineup includes posts from Jeremy Hunt on arts funding, Ricky Gervais on the 10th anniversary of The Office, Sarah Brown on the global advances being made in maternal mortality, Alastair Campbell on politicians navigating a Facebook and Twitter world, former Wham! manager Simon Napier-Bell on why art is the new rock and roll, Kate Garraway on being female and funny, Lord Weidenfeld on Syria's "sadistic cruelty," and Tracey Ullman on blogging for HuffPost and impersonating...well, me.
And, as we move forward, we intend to make you -- our HuffPost UK community -- a big part of the editorial mix, via your suggestions, feedback, and comments. In the U.S., HuffPost currently gets over 4 million comments a month -- and we are about to hit a real milestone: our 100,000,000th comment. Please register as a HuffPost UK user -- and join the conversation. In this time of transition, make your voice heard.
So welcome to HuffPost UK -- and please use the comment section on this post to let us know what you think.
Premiering below is the video for the Ben Folds song "A Working Day," the kick-off track from his album Lonely Avenue. Co-written with novelist Nick Hornby, "A Working Day" is a commentary on popularity and hipness that skewers its topic while calling out the internet, blogs, and other social media in the process.
"We had done an a cappella version of 'A Working Day,' which tied together audiences of two thousand people apiece in seven different cities," explains Folds. "It's like a fifteen thousand person choir. We tied that all in with computer editing, so that all those people are singing together and it was all videotaped. So, we're releasing a video today of our fifteen thousand people choir across the Midwest."
Below the video is an interview with Folds that took place early Tuesday that discusses his tour, his album Lonely Avenue, and his approaches to creativity that include the "8in8" experiment and participating as a judge on The Sing-Off.
A Conversation with Ben Folds
Mike Ragogna: Hey Ben, how are you doing?
Ben Folds: I'm good, I'm good. How are you doing?
MR: I'm good, honored that you took some time to talk with me.
BF: Oh yeah, no worries.
MR: Let's talk about Lonely Avenue, your collaboration with novelist, Nick Hornby. A while back, I debuted one of your singles in HuffPost, "The Levi Johnston Blues." Actually, let's start there. What are your thoughts about the Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston drama?
BF: Well, Nick and I have a lot in common, and one of those things we have in common is that we don't care about that. I think what we were interested in is the sudden coming of age that often happens in your teenage years, where you're old enough. When I was that age, I was old enough to register for the draft but wasn't old enough to drink. You're old enough to go to college but you're not really old enough to call your own shots. This is an extreme circumstance, where you've got a kid who happens to have a pregnant girlfriend, but oops, his girlfriend is the daughter of the potential Vice President of the United States, so everybody has something to say about exactly what his future is going to hold. It was more about his being just caught in this moment that is so dramatic.
Nick likes to find a moment that everyone can relate to, but find that one that's so extreme that it resonates. Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not. So, this is the dramatic moment you couldn't live in your own life, and that's really what we were thinking. I don't think that either of us really were that concerned with those people. Even the celebrity of it--it's not that interesting, and it's not that characteristic of Nick. He had been watching the Republican National Convention, and he saw this one boy on stage that he didn't know anything about. He was just looking at him and going, "Wow, what's this kid's story?" So, he started looking into it.
MR: Of course, we know Nick Hornby for having written About A Boy, High Fidelity and a few other novels. How did you both get together and come up with the idea for an album?
BF: Well, he'd been coming to see my shows in London since probably one of our very first gigs there. At the same time, I think, I was reading High Fidelity, which would have been about '96. I don't recall exactly where we met, but I think we met backstage at the Barbican Theatre, in London. We've just known each other now for a while, and we figured we'd eventually do something like this. I mean, I pushed the issue because I wanted to do an album where I didn't have to think about the lyrics, really, and Nick is the only person I can think of that I would trust with that role.
MR: The topics are pretty fluid. With each song, there are different approaches and stories. Lonely Avenue almost seems like a collection of short stories.
BF: Yeah, Nick's not short on ideas and concepts for stories. The thing I was saying about finding the moment that resonates? He just seems to see those all the time, that's just the way he thinks. He'll find the angle that makes sense, and that's what he does over and over again. For the album, he just kept making the lyrics out, it was great. He must have done thirty or thirty-five sets of lyrics.
MR: How did the collaboration work? Did you do it over the internet?
BF: It wasn't very high-tech. He would send me finished lyrics in an email, and then I would bring the email up, read the lyrics, and start making music.
MR: Nice. I'll throw out there that "Picture Window" is one of my favorite things I think I've ever heard. I love how the passage of time is handled with her checking into a hospital in New Year's Eve, and later on, it's revealed, "Dusk to darkness surrenders the color as the fireworks streak the sky." It was such a beautiful way to reveal six months have passed. Did you end up finding any of these songs particularly touching to you?
BF: I think that one works for me too. We did the piano, vocal, and string sections all live in the studio, which is very scary because you're paying quite a bit of money and you have to get it right in a couple takes. One of the viola players' daughter was in the hospital at that time, and she was having a hard time getting through the song because she was going through all that too. I think we've all been through the hospital thing, and also the way that fits against having a picture window or false hope--really it's a great song. I think "Practical Amanda" is one that really works for me too. I think that's particularly touching, the myth of the sort of creative partner in a relationship, while the other one is just supposed to be running around cleaning the floors. Yet it's still a love story, and I think that's really touching because it's real.
MR: Beautiful. Somewhat recently you did you did that "8in8" concept, right?
BF: Yeah. Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, OK Go's Damien Kulash and I were all to do a panel for Berklee School of Music and Harvard School of Music, and we were just going to talk about the internet and how it's affected music. We all talked about it a little bit, and decided that, actually, the internet had not affected music at all. It had changed the distribution of music. But if we were going to sit there and do another talk about how the internet has affected music and how important we are for having been on the internet, I was going to bore us to tears. So, we decided instead to put a webcam in the studio and give ourselves eight hours to write and record eight songs. Then, we figured, that would be the internet having an affect on music. We put the webcam in there, we set up, and then we would go to our Twitter accounts and talk to people. They would have things they'd said, ideas for songs or thoughts on things, and we would give those to Neil Gaiman. Neil would write some lyrics, and then the three of us would go off to the corner--several corners if necessary--and write these songs. We managed to do "6in12," rather than "8in8." I had done something similar before. I had done what we called a "fake album," where we did an album in twelve hours. It was supposed to have been more songs, but it was six too. I think six songs in twelve hours, written from scratch to the final mix, is about as fast as you can go.
MR: What a terrific experiment, being able to test and show how the internet actually affects music.
BF: Yeah, it's affecting the music at that point, and it's enabling a speed of creativity and distribution that connects you to an audience as if you're playing a live show. In that way, it does bring the recorded medium and being live closer together. Every once in a while, someone will ask, "Why bother with that? It's an intellectual experiment, and really just a banal exercise." It's really not. For a musician, it's another excuse to create, it's another circumstance to make music, and that's what we're doing all the time. We actually got a couple of good songs out of that.
MR: Amazing, you also discovered another link between the recorded and live approaches. Speaking of performing live, you're going on tour again to support Lonely Avenue, right?
BF: Yeah, well, it's to support everything, really. I'm just out there playing a tour.
MR: And you'll be appearing with Dave Matthews on part of the tour?
BF: We're playing the Dave Matthews Festival in Chicago.
MR: And you'll also be at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco?
BF: That's correct.
MR: When you perform live these days, do you do the full repertoire? Do you do stuff even going back to the Ben Folds Five?
BF: I do, yeah. I mean, not as much old, old stuff, but it does exist in the set. Maybe this is wrong, but I feel like I craft my songs carefully enough that I still find that fifteen years after having written one, it still works for me--I'm not cringing. The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.
MR: One other thing I wanted to bring up is that you were a judge on the television show The Sing-Off. Do you have any thoughts on your judging?
BF: Well, I don't think of it as judging so much as sort of giving them feedback. This is a little bit different kind of a show because there's no rhythm section, no band, no tapes, and there's no safety net at all. There's nothing that's on stage that is just there to support--it's all what's being judged. With the a cappella groups, every voice is like one string on a guitar, one note on the piano, or one cymbal, and you don't have the luxury of falling back on anything. What we're critiquing is the entire picture, so it can be a little more musically technical. When someone's been put to that sort of a test on live television--because I know what it feels like, and I think it's extremely nerve racking--you're pretty hyper-aware that something went right or something went wrong, so it's a really good time to have someone who has gone through it before say, "You know, something went wrong in the pre-chorus, right? Well, you might not know it, but the problem is your bass singer was going flat, which means your lead singer didn't have good footing.." Whatever you perceived happen, they find it really helpful, as I would, to have a musician that's done it. So, that's my critique of my critiquing. I just tried to give them the helicopter view of what just happened.
MR: Right. And you're going to be doing that in the Fall again, right?
BF: Yeah, I am, I enjoy it. I will do it as long as I have time and the show is relevant.
MR: What's nice about the show is that--at least with the majority of the groups that I saw--virtually all of those groups' pitches and performances were spot on without pitch correction. Like you said, it's raw, and all the talent is right in your face.
BF: Yeah, and there's a high element of risk, as a result. Frankly, I've never seen another singing show, but I get it--I know what's going on. You're not worried that the rhythm section or the drummer is going to lose it on American Idol. There's that sense that you're going to be carried through by something professional. These groups on The Sing-Off just have to stand up there and do it, and if your E string is out on your guitar, which means that one of your baritone singers is out, that's bad--you're toast. I think that element of risk brings you closer to the groups because you can empathize with where they're at, at that moment. I also think it's really interesting for people to see large groups of people working together. It's called harmony and it's something that we don't see in airports or on CSPAN--you just don't see that these days on television. So, I think it's really nice to see people really working together. Even the groups themselves are, strangely, not competitive. I think it's possibly because of their genre, because they're so used to having to work together in big groups and make it all work. There are tears on the show when people get kicked off and they're usually shed by the groups that are still on.
MR: Yeah, I always thought that was kind of sweet.
BF: So, I don't know, I think it's a unique show, it's got its niche, and that's all you can really ask for. I like being involved in things that have a niche...you feel useful, and it's not too damn big. I think that's great.
MR: That describes Ben Folds' music, doesn't it?
BF: Well, I would hope so.
MR: You've already taken so many different creative approaches over the course of your career, what advice would you have for new artists?
BF: Same advice that I think would have been true as long as there have been artists at all--you put your craft and your art first, you learn as much as you can, and you keep striving to be better. I'm never comfortable with people in the studio or people that I work with who think that everything that they do is great...it always bothers me. I think we all ought to be trying to get better and that's really the main thrust of it. I mean, all the stuff about the internet and how you're going to get discovered, that's going to change by the moment. I just think you do what you do. Music is to be shared--it's generous--so, get out there and play shows, play gigs, and get your music out there. If it's going to happen, it will happen, and if it's not going to happen, then that's okay too.
MR: Beautiful. So, was your experience with Nick so incredible that you're tempted to do Lonely Avenue 2?
BF: Well, I think we're tempted to write a musical piece together. As soon as we finished that project, we both started to get really busy. I've been working on a retrospective CD that is a three CD set, plus fifty-five songs that go along with it on the internet. So, it's like a one hundred-ten song collection.
MR: And you have enough of a catalog that you can handle that, don't you.
BF: It's pretty interesting. I never thought of myself as having been prolific, I didn't think of myself as someone who had a lot behind them. But man, when you start to put that together... Everybody that's working on the record still has a whole list of songs that we want but we don't have room for. It's kind of bizarre because I didn't know I'd written so much. But I've been working really hard on that, and Nick's been writing loads of stuff.
MR: Well, this has been great, Ben. I really appreciate you spending some time with me today. All the best for the tour, all the best with what's coming up in the future, and please let's do this again, sir.
BF: Alright, I will do that, man.
Tracks: 1. A Working Day 2. Picture Window 3. Levi Johnston's Blues 4. Doc Pomus 5. Your Dogs 6. Practical Amanda 7. Claire's Ninth 8. Password 9. From Above 10. Saskia Hamilton 11. Belinda
One of the most influential painters in the world, Cy Twombly, has died at the age of 83. Known for his scratchy compositions and "grey ground" paintings, his poetic engagements with Italian and classical verse, and a stylistic and critical divisiveness that spanned more than 50 years, Twombly rose to become one of the most important artists of the last century. Gagosian Gallery, who represents Twombly's work, announced today the passing of the celebrated painter and sculptor. Although the cause of death is not yet certain, the artist had previously suffered from cancer. He died in Rome, Italy, a country the artist called home since 1957.
Cy Twombly, Bacchanalia-Fall (5 Days in November), 1977. Photo: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. (via Guardian UK)
Born in Lexington, Virginia in 1928, Twombly actively distanced himself from the major movements of 20th-century art, both stylistically and geographically. For decades, both critics and the public struggled to place his work within the larger Modern art milieu at large, and later, artists like Joseph Beuys and Jean-Michel Basquiat would come to contextualize his work in unexpected ways, catapulting his critical approbation and significance in 20th-century art. He was subsequently featured in the 1988 Venice Biennale, and, in 1995, Dominique de Menil commissioned the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston, Texas, a permanent site dedicated to a retrospective of the artist's work, as part of The Menil Collection, one of the most important private collections and public institutions in the United States.
Read more below.
Twombly's work will be celebrated for centuries to come, and its true influence -- beyond what has already taken place during his lifetime -- still has yet to be seen. His passing is also especially affecting to this writer. I fondly recall skipping class before lunch in high school in Houston to quietly slip into the Twombly Gallery, not far away, and marvel at his work. He leaves behind an incredible legacy the likes of which we are only just beginning to understand.
As Congress returns from the Independence Day celebration recess, it is an ideal time for all of us to reflect on how dependent political figures and big agribusiness seem to be on each other.
Last month -- in what I considered an outrageous political shell game --key figures in the House of Representatives quietly blocked a bipartisan plan to cut $167 million in government subsidies to agribusiness and wealthy farmers which was included in the House Agricultural Appropriations bill, as they took a chainsaw to funding for food aid and food safety programs in the House Agricultural Appropriations bill.
This penny-foolish, pound-foolish maneuver cut muscle from vital public health efforts and left a huge chunk of budgetary fat untouched. And it continues subsidies that encourage production of unhealthy foods that feed America's costly obesity and diabetes epidemics.
At a time when life-threatening outbreaks of E. coli and other foodborne illnesses surface almost weekly, the House leadership aims to cut the Food and Drug Administration's budget almost 12 percent -- thereby killing much-needed efforts to improve food safety.
And even as many American families struggle to put meals on the table, House leaders are cutting food aid to low-income mothers and children and gutting efforts to improve school lunches.
The food aid and food safety cuts are especially disturbing because agricultural subsidies go mostly to some of the wealthiest people and corporations in the nation. From 1995 to 2009, the largest and wealthiest top 10 percent of farm program recipients received 74 percent of all farm subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group.
But under the House leadership's new plan, rich recipients of agricultural subsidy payments -- including those making as much as $750,000 a year -- won't see any decrease in subsidies.
We've been here before. Powerful agricultural interests have blocked most efforts to reform agricultural subsidies for decades. But finally, we were seeing progress on a commonsense bill that included cuts in taxpayer-funded payments to the richest of the rich farmers. The cuts, which had been approved by a key House committee, were the most bipartisan possible, with support from both Tea Party-affiliated lawmakers and President Obama.
Then the House leadership stepped in to stop this reform effort in its tracks. And that could harm the physical and economic health of Americans for many years to come.
In addition to funneling limited resources to farmers who clearly don't need them, subsidies contribute to chronic diseases that kill millions of Americans every year.
Earlier this year, the federal government issued new dietary guidelines that urge Americans to reduce their intake of saturated fat and sweeteners. That means consuming less meat, cheese, and high fructose corn syrup -- and more fruits and vegetables.
Yet more than 60 percent of agricultural subsidies for domestic food products in recent history have directly and indirectly supported meat and dairy production. Another substantial chunk has supported the production of high-fructose corn syrup. Less than 1 percent of these subsidies have gone to fruits and vegetables.
We can't afford to subsidize unhealthy foods. In 2008, the direct medical costs associated with obesity totaled $147 billion. We already spend more than $190 billion a year to treat diabetes and pre-diabetes -- and those costs will rise to $500 billion a year by 2020. The American Heart Association estimates that, by 2030, direct costs related to cardiovascular disease will triple to around $818 billion.
The risk of these life-threatening and expensive-to-treat conditions can be greatly reduced by eating diets low in animal products and sweeteners and rich in fruit, vegetables, and whole grains. But those healthy choices are actually discouraged by current agricultural subsidies.
The last thing our country needs is a taxpayer-funded subsidy system that favors the very foods that contribute to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. All Americans deserve access to healthful foods -- and should be able to eat their lunch without worrying about E. coli.
Saving money is a good thing. But let's start balancing the national checkbook by cutting subsidies to big agribusiness -- not by chopping away at programs that improve food safety and keep kids from going hungry. We must make sure that the Senate takes more sensible actions in its agricultural appropriations bill.
Salad can get a bad rap. People think of bland and watery iceberg lettuce, but in fact, salads are an art form, from the simplest rendition to a colorful kitchen-sink approach.
Eaters choose salad for reasons as varied as the ingredients in a salad bowl. A lightly coated dish of greens might offer cleansing, while a hearty pilaf that combines barley with vegetables, spices, and flavor-boosters like cheese, herbs, and seeds, offers a filling and delicious meal.
Whether you're on a diet, or you're looking for a go-to one bowl dinner recipe, salads should be thought of as crowd-pleasers, not a dreaded component of a meal. Salads are also an excuse to use up leftovers and eat all the colors in the rainbow. Perhaps best of all, salads allow you to be creative.
I received an email the other day (we'll get to it shortly). It crystallized why writing, blogging, spotlighting and commenting, together as a community for humanity matters.
Stay with me.
I entered the workforce in 1980 at a trailblazing time for women. Yet, I found the corporate workplace easier to work in, to navigate, back then. My mentor taught me the business well, had my future and best interests at heart. I knew that if I worked hard, put in the requisite "rookie" time, had the tenacity to last, there would be an opportunity to advance, to be rewarded. Back then, the investment banks were small and entrepreneurial (before the age of conglomeration), some still private (where risk-taking was under control). So too, back then, individual entrepreneurship and independent thinking, within the field I was in, were encouraged.
Over decades, I observed the corporate workplace change -- some good, some not so good. Work hours and work load expanded. For example, used to be that corporate treasury departments were exactly that, departments -- rather than a handful of people. Many young today find themselves working in environments without a sense of what's next for them as individuals -- moving around in the hopes for advancement. Frequent job change used to be dubbed as "job hopping" and frowned upon. Nowadays, many wait for signs of an improving economy just to make a switch. Not all are or desire to be "dot-comers," or "Wall Streeters."
Work spills over into family or leisure time. Boundaries are less defined. No doubt, our devices give us mobility, flexibility. Yet, how do we rein in the ever present work connectedness? Children, for example, know when we're distracted, but are they then distracted because we're distracted? Yet, family and leisure time forms the basis of culture, so eloquently delineated in a book I read in college of like name -- Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture. At that young age, I wondered why my favorite philosophy professor wanted us to read and remember this book. Now I understand it's meaning.
The drive for profit is not the issue. It's the drive for profit, at "any" cost, that has me worried.
What about you?
I read an article last week about those over 50, seeking internships to be noticed, for a job. For some, it's on the heels of multi-decade long careers.
Difficult. No doubt, painful.
Like starting all over again, only this time you're in your mid-fifties waiting, perhaps, at the back of the line. Feels like a waiting room. Many feel throttled. In some instances, education, wisdom and experience may no longer matter, or perhaps, are no longer valued.
This comes on the heels of an article last year about college students seeking unpaid internships, striving to get a chance in a tough economy.
Are we at an inflection point where the traditional "glass ceiling" is expanding across the spectrum of society, where education and hard work may not be the sole answer to getting ahead anymore?
Look around the waiting room -- millions unemployed (officially 9.1%), underemployed, or losing hope in their quest for a job.
Are we cost-cutting our own now that the corporate quest for how and where to produce products more cheaply is in full swing, or is becoming more competitive?
The magnitude of the economic crisis resonates. Will many ever see prosperity, given the current construct of our existing economy? Will uncertain economic conditions impede the natural flow of life -- setting up a household, having a family...?
I am moved by the discourse and insightful comments on recent blogs -- the desire by many for expression, the desire to be heard. The following hit me deeply to remind us that we are:
...one family, one consciousness, one planet, one heart...
I took note, when a note showed up in my email from a young aspiring professional. It came with a photo of a majestic view from the summit after a mountain climb. What I found touching, is the manner in which he reached out that I might spotlight "effort and reward" in an upcoming blog.
Read on.
...that connection between our effort and our reward; something I feel that we have lost. You scurry over loose rock, a precipitous plummet on either side, bereft of adequate oxygen to fill your lungs, a tug in your chest from your pounding heart, yet you persist and make the slow, steady climb to have tangible evidence of your labor: To look across the vastness of creation, and see the beauty -- a witness only offered through the dedication of the climb. We have a society that expects everyone to climb, but at the final moment so many are denied the moment of satisfaction...
The 13th-century Sopoćani monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage Site near the source of the Raška River, just east of Novi Pazar in the south-western corner of Serbia. After two centuries of attack, desolation and abandonment, its Church of the Holy Trinity is now rebuilt, its frescoes restored and its monastic life revived.
In the southern choir of that eastward-pointing church are frescoes of seven apostles. Five are now unidentifiable, as time and decay has literally defaced them, but each is folding a single scroll. Matthew is identifiable and he is holding the book of his Gospel. But the most clearly identifiable is the leading figure on the choir's east wall. It is the apostle Paul, complete with his recognizable receding hairline. His right hand is raised in the traditional Byzantine teaching gesture of fingers separated into two (for two natures in Christ) and three (for three Persons in the Trinity). What is extraordinary, however, is that his left hand holds 10 clearly distinguishable scrolls -- not a single scroll or book but 10 scrolls in a cluster.
Why 10 scrolls when Christianity's New Testament attributes 13 letters to the apostle Paul: letters to communities such as the Romans, Corinthians (twice), Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians (twice) and to individuals such as Timothy (twice), Titus and Philemon.
There is, however, a massive consensus in modern scholarship that those three letters to Timothy and Titus were written in Paul's name but long after his death. It would seen, then, that around 1265 a Byzantine artist at Sopoćani already accepted that viewpoint -- hence, only 10 scrolls for 10 letters.
There is also a strong (but not massive) consensus among much of modern scholarship that a further three of those 10 letters were not written by Paul. In other words, we have seven letters certainly from the historical Paul (Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon), three others probably not from him (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians) and a final three certainly not from him (1-2 Timothy, Titus). Those are all, of course, historical conclusions and not dogmatic presumptions. Well and good, but, even if correct, so what? And why should anyone care?
It is not just that we have factual and fictional letters of "Paul" or that those 13 letters are mixed between a Paul and a Pseudo-Paul. It is not just that, after Paul's death, followers imagined him in new situations and had him respond to new problems -- as if in a seamless if fictional continuity from past into present and future.
The problem is that those post-Pauline or Pseudo-Pauline letters are primarily counter-Pauline and anti-Pauline. What happens across those three sets of letters is that the radical Paul of the authentic seven letters (Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) is slowly but steadily morphed into the conservative Paul of the probably inauthentic threesome (Ephesians Colossians, 2 Thessalonians) and finally into the reactionary Paul of those certainly inauthentic ones (1-2 Timothy, Titus).
In other words, the radical Paul is being deradicalized, sanitized and Romanized. His radical views on, for example, slavery and patriarchy, are being retrofitted into Roman cultural expectations and Roman social presuppositions. Watch, then, how it works in terms of slavery (I leave patriarchy for my next blog in this series on Paul):
The radical and historical Paul sent back the now-converted slave Onesimus to his owner and told him that a Christian could not own a Christian for how could Christians be equal and unequal to one another at the same time? He reminds him "to do your duty," to free Onesimus, and to consider him "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother -- especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord" (Philemon 1:8,16).
Next, the later, conservative counter-Paul takes Christian owners with Christian slaves absolutely for granted, addresses both classes and reminds each of its mutual obligations. "Slaves obey ... fearing the Lord" and "Masters treat your slaves justly ... you also have a Master in heaven" (Colossians 3:22-4:1 & Ephesians 6:5-9). Christian-on-Christian slavery is back but now in kinder, gentler mode!
Finally, the still later and reactionary anti-Paul never mentions mutual duties, addresses only the master, and says to "tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and ... to be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior" (Titus 2:9-10).
What is at stake in that sad progression from Paul to anti-Paul? Why is it of importance that -- at least with regard to slavery -- radical Christian liberty is being changed back into normal Roman slavery. It means this: Jewish Christianity is becoming Roman Christianity. And this: Constantine here we come!
For years, many lamented that the U.S. decision to invade Iraq detracted from our focus on Afghanistan and made Operation Enduring Freedom America's forgotten war. Now, with a false declaration that combat operations are over in Iraq, what is now Operation New Dawn has ironically become a forgotten war.
Yet, we need no further reminder than the spike in violence and American deaths in Iraq to remind us that we are still very much at war in Iraq. Fifteen Americans died in Iraq in June, making it the deadliest period there for American troops in two years. Still very much lost in the back pages of America's newspapers is news that American forces might stay in Iraq well past our agreed upon deadline of the end of this year. That is about to change.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- the president's top ally in the Senate -- came out forcefully today against a continued American presence in Iraq, which most observers believe President Obama is for. Senator Reid said, according to the Associated Press, "As Iraq becomes increasingly capable, it is time for our own troops to return home by the end of the year and for these precious resources to be directed elsewhere. There is no question that the United States must continue to provide support for the Iraqis as they progress, but now is the time for our military mission to come to a close."
The effect of Senator Reid's statement on the debate cannot be understated. What had seemed to be a non-issue to many is now a debate with the leader of the president's own party in the Senate issuing the president a strong warning. Reid's words open the door for other Democrats to come out against our troops staying in Iraq past our Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) deadline.
What has become abundantly clear is that as long as Americans are in Iraq, they will be a target. Should we stay in Iraq past our deadline, there is no reason to believe that violent attacks won't further increase, leading to more American deaths. The United States will then be forced to either endure the attacks or send in more troops to protect our forces. There is simply no outcome from staying past the SOFA deadline that is acceptable or desirable.
Senator Harry Reid has just done our nation and our troops a service by forcing a debate on the length of American presence in Iraq. Thus far, there has been little to no discussion regarding US policy in Iraq should Prime Minister Maliki request that American forces stay past the current deadline set by the Status of Forces Agreement. We must have this debate now so that we can strategically decide American policy based on our long term objectives and allow military leaders sufficient time to plan. Our troops and citizens deserve this debate.
Men are experiencing increasing work-family conflict, more even than women.
In 1977, 34% of employed men living with at least one family member reported that their work and family responsibilities conflicted with each other "some" or "a lot." By 2008, that number had climbed to 49%. And for fathers in dual-earner families -- their work-family conflict has increased from 35% in 1977 to 60% in 2008, while that of mothers in dual-earner families has stayed statistically the same, now at 47%.
Fathers' work-family conflict at 60%, mothers' at 47%.
I remember the very first time I shared these findings from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce conducted by the Families and Work Institute (FWI) -- our ongoing nationally representative study of the U.S. workforce. It was at a seminar of business leaders who focus on work-life and workforce diversity issues. The business executives at this seminar literally laughed. They were so focused on the fact that the advancement of women into executive ranks seemed to be stalled that a concern about men and their work-family conflict seemed like a joke.
In our new report authored by Kerstin Aumann, Kenneth Matos and myself, we have begun to uncover what's behind these increases. It is:
Working long hours: Among the 38% of men who work 50 or more hours per week, 60% report experiencing some or a lot of conflict. Surprisingly, it's not the hours spent on child care or even housework by men, but hours spent working that affects work-family conflict.
Working in demanding jobs: Among the 22% of men with very demanding jobs, 61% experience some or a lot of conflict.
Being work-centric (which means putting work first): Among the 29% of men who prioritize work over their personal or family lives, 62% experience high conflict.
Simply being a father in a dual-earner couple, 60% of whom feel conflicted.
The finding that has received the most media attention is that fathers in dual-earner couples are working longer hours than men their ages without children. In fact, they work three hours more a week than men without children. More two in five (42%) work 50 or more hours a week, compared with one in three men their ages without children.
And that's where the joking begins again. Since the study came out, I have heard people say, "Well, no wonder men are working more hours. They want to escape from their families."
It reminds me of public hearing around the time family leave legislation was being debated. People asked why men should have parental leaves: "They would probably use parental leaves to play golf." I even heard it suggested in a mid-western state -- far from the land of alligators -- that men would use leaves to go "alligator hunting."
Of course, we all -- men and women alike -- sometimes want to escape from family life. But our data reveal that men really want to be more involved with their children and families. They are spending more time with their children than men did in the past. And even 31% of women say that their husbands take as much or more responsibility for their children as the women do, up from 21% in 1992.
In the national study, men who were working more hours then they wished (54% of men) were asked why they did so. Overall, 47% say that they need the money, 16% say they couldn't keep their jobs if they tried to reduce their hours, and 14% say that they need to work hours to keep up with the demands of their jobs. In an economy where men's wages have remained flat or declined slightly and where jobs are increasingly insecure, men want and need to be good breadwinners as well as involved fathers.
Today, men are experiencing what women experienced when they first entered the workforce in record numbers -- the pressure to "do it all in order to have it all." This is the essence of the "new male mystique."
We are hopefully learning not to joke (or make assumptions) about women's need to provide for their families economically and be involved parents. We likewise shouldn't joke (or make assumptions) about men's need to be involved parents and provide for their families economically. It is no joking matter!
History was made in 2008 when the United States elected its first African-American President -- Barack Obama. But cut to 2011 and for the first time in history, the United States has its first openly gay Presidential candidate -- Fred Karger. And I had to meet him. And not only to see how he stacked up against the other candidates, but also make sure this "gay Presidential hopeful" wasn't simply a myth or a fairy tale. Pun intended.
The thieves who made off with more than $2.5M from Citibank and caused the bank to issue 100,000 replacement bank cards have highlighted an alarming trend. Hackers are evolving. And, they are organizing and uniting. They even have a Twitter account. Before the advent of the Internet, we called these hackers "robbers" or "criminals" or the "mafia." However, now that the Internet has provided a way to enter the front door through the digital underground, hacking has evolved in to a disastrous enterprise.
I'm seeing the evolution of four kinds of hackers emerging into cohesive groups that we need to pay close attention to.
Mobsters: The hackers who attacked Citibank are probably "mobster" hackers. Mobsters are hackers who are connected to large-scale criminal enterprises bringing new meaning to the phrase "organized crime." In some cases, crime families are hiring hacking groups to procure log-in information for one site knowing that many consumers today are using the same log-in for their financial sites as well. Citibank seems like a perfect example of this kind of activity.
Taunters: Taunting hackers are just thumbing their noses at anyone who dares to believe they have good online security systems in place. These kinds of hacker are breaking security settings, stealing email addresses, and bypassing firewalls just to show that it can be done, usually to the great embarrassment of the company being preyed upon. The hackers who keep breaching Sony's systems and the CIA website are most likely taunters.
Activists: Activist hackers seem to have taken a nod from Taunters. While the act of hacking remains criminal, hackers who are breaching security to support a social cause aren't in it for the money. The hi-jacking of the PBS website to protest the Frontline story on WikiLeaks is a prime example as are the attacks on Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Sarah Palin. These are more like sit-ins, road blocks, and Green Peace protests.
Anarchists: The fourth and final kind of hackers are those who are working to dismantle governments, disrupt the lives of entire populations, or shut down some branch of government. Anarchist hackers may be engaged in what some might call terrorists activities and others might call citizen uproars or even revolutions. (On a side note, when sponsored by nation-states against enemies, they fall under counter-intelligence activities as well. See unleashing worms).
Whenever those destined to engage in criminal activity of any kind begin to unite and organize, good citizens must pay serious attention. Metamorphosis is a dynamic process, and the hacking evolution is no different. As certain groups gain strength and numbers, allegiances will shift and factions will break.
And as they declare war on each other, the good citizens of the world, like you and I, can find ourselves in a heap of collateral damage.
These days, it appears as though the main goal of government policy is to give as much money as possible to corporations and the wealthy. This is an area where there has been considerable success, with the profit share of GDP at near record highs and the richest 1 percent holding a larger portion of the nation's wealth than at any point since the late '20s. The proposals for an employer-side payroll tax cut should be seen in this light.
The argument being pushed by proponents of the cut is that a temporary reduction in the employer's side of the payroll tax will give them more incentive to hire workers. This argument does not pass the laugh test, but of course, most of the things being said in elite Washington circles these days do not pass the laugh test.
As usual, the flaws can be exposed with simple arithmetic. The employer's side of the payroll tax is 6.2 percent. The argument goes that if we temporarily eliminate this tax, then it is cheaper to hire workers, so employers will hire more.
This argument depends on the responsiveness of labor demand to the price of labor. The employer tax cutters would say that labor demand is quite responsive to changes in price. However, the evidence points in the opposite direction.
Over the two-year period 1995 to 1997, we raised the minimum wage by more than 15 percent, after adjusting for inflation. There is a large body of research that shows that this increase had no measurable impact on employment. There also have been two subsequent increases in the national minimum wage as well as several increases in statewide and citywide minimum wages. The overwhelming majority of research on these hikes shows that there was no measurable impact on employment.
If we can permanently raise wages by 15 percent and see no measurable decline on employment, how can we think that a temporary reduction in wages of 6.2 percent would have a major impact on employment? Even in Washington, 15 percent is larger than 6.2 percent. A smaller change in the cost of labor cannot have a bigger effect than a larger change, and a temporary change cannot have a bigger effect than a permanent change. (If the tax cut is in place for one year, then an employer hiring in July gets the lower cost for six months.)
There are ways to make an employer-side tax cut more effective, for example by tying it to hiring new workers. However, this is a difficult one to enforce. There is enormous churning in the economy, with roughly four million people leaving their jobs and getting hired at new ones every month.
Most likely, if we restrict the tax cut to firms that hire new workers, we will just be rewarding firms for hiring that is part of this monthly churning. Of course, if a temporary 6.2 percent cut in taxes doesn't provide much incentive to hire in any case, then the consequence of making the tax cut more narrowly focused will be primarily to reduce its cost, not increase its effectiveness.
Many of the proponents of the employer-side payroll tax cut have cited the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) estimate of the multiplier for this policy. They point out that CBO puts the multiplier for this policy at 1.2, meaning that $1 billion in additional spending or lost revenue leads to $1.2 billion in addition GDP. That figure puts the tax cut near the top in CBO's rankings.
However, the 1.2 multiplier is just the top end of a large range that has 0.4 as its bottom. A multiplier of 0.4 would put the policy near the bottom in CBO's ranking. It means that $1 billion in lost revenue would lead to just $400 million in increased output.
A large range like this suggests that CBO sees a high degree of uncertainty on the impact of this policy. As noted, the recent research on the minimum wage suggests that the impact would be small, but there could be other factors pointing in the opposite direction.
One aspect of this tax cut that is not in dispute is that it raises important issues about the future of Social Security. And this is true whether the tax cut is on the employer side or employee side.
While the plans at present call for crediting the Social Security trust fund with the full amount that it would have received had there been no cut in the payroll tax, this is a departure from past practice in which the trust fund's revenue came entirely from the designated payroll tax or interest earned on bonds bought by the trust fund. The 2 percentage point employee-side payroll tax cut that is currently in place and any future cuts, imply that general revenue is now being used to finance Social Security.
There is nothing wrong with using general revenue for Social Security in principle, however, several Republicans have already indicated that they intend to use the revenue shortfall as an argument for cutting benefits. They may not get far in this effort, however, giving the Obama administration's openness to cuts in Social Security, it is dangerous to go down this path.
It is possible to give whatever cut is intended through a reduction in the payroll tax through an income tax cut or credit. There is no obvious reason to prefer that the cut be designated as a "payroll tax" cut, unless the point is to raise issues about Social Security. Presumably, this is why the Republicans insist that tax cuts take this form.
In short, the employer-side payroll tax cut is not only bad policy for boosting the economy; it also unnecessarily puts Social Security in jeopardy. This is one form of stimulus that we can certainly do without.
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