I’d like to express solidarity with the organizers of the protest against the Westboro Baptist Church demonstration (Cambridge Chronicle, 3/19/09). Any decent person—irrespective of the debate on gay marriage—recoils at Westboro’s harassment of high school students and their protests at military funerals with signs rejoicing in the death of American soldiers as divine retribution for America’s tolerance of gays.
I’d also like to point out that Westboro is a non-partisan offender; they have been universally denounced by all parts of the political spectrum, including, among many others, conservative radio/television hosts Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. The issue Westboro raises is not conservative vs. liberal politics, but common decency vs. hate-filled demagoguery.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Exploding toasters
Obama made an interesting comment in his Leno interview:
While it's true that some people get in over their heads with debt and deserve a second chance, i.e., declaring bankruptcy, Obama doesn't seem to be aware of the difference between a faulty toaster and a maxed out credit card. The consumer has no way of controlling the manufacture of a toaster, but he should be responsible for his decisions to purchase too much on credit, whether it be a house or a flat screen television. In Obama's vision, we are children who must be protected by the government.
And by the way, do toasters explode?
When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face there's a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But when you get a credit card, or you get a mortgage, there's no law on the books that says if that explodes in your face financially, somehow you're going to be protected.
While it's true that some people get in over their heads with debt and deserve a second chance, i.e., declaring bankruptcy, Obama doesn't seem to be aware of the difference between a faulty toaster and a maxed out credit card. The consumer has no way of controlling the manufacture of a toaster, but he should be responsible for his decisions to purchase too much on credit, whether it be a house or a flat screen television. In Obama's vision, we are children who must be protected by the government.
And by the way, do toasters explode?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
RAT
According to the Globe, "Obama has continued to stress the importance of community service by promoting federal programs such as Renew America Together." An entity that would chose a name whose acronym is RAT doesn't inspire much confidence.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Helping Industry
The Boston Globe highlighted the careers of three community organizers in this story:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2009/03/10/organized__energized/?page=2
One is an ex-con who is Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner’s Director of Constituent Services. His job sounds reasonable enough, despite the nutcase politics of his boss—but he seems more like a city employee than a community organizer.
Another example is the Phillips Exeter & Wesleyan graduate who “leads a program that uses hip-hop to teach about sustainability.” No comment.
The lead story is more disturbing:
Perhaps Mr. Loh finds satisfaction in his current employment. It would be presumptuous to tell him he should have stuck with the internship at Draper.
But in general, it seems like a bad idea to convince “star MIT electrical engineers” that they are of more value to society by becoming “advocates” for things like “affordable subway service.” This is the paradigm advanced by Michelle Obama, when she told college students “to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry”:
Teachers and nurses, to be sure. But how many hip-hop sustainability educators do we as a society need?
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2009/03/10/organized__energized/?page=2
One is an ex-con who is Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner’s Director of Constituent Services. His job sounds reasonable enough, despite the nutcase politics of his boss—but he seems more like a city employee than a community organizer.
Another example is the Phillips Exeter & Wesleyan graduate who “leads a program that uses hip-hop to teach about sustainability.” No comment.
The lead story is more disturbing:
Penn Loh was a star MIT electrical engineering student from the Pennsylvania suburbs on "a model minority track," he says, when he heard the call of community service.
A talented Chinese-American student pursuing a lucrative career in a scientific profession, Loh had just begun an internship at Draper Laboratory, which works on defense projects. The position was the outcome of winning a spot in a competitive electrical engineering program that would allow him to get a bachelor's and master's degree in five years. That same semester he took a class on intellectuals and social responsibility. The more Loh heard in that class, the more his job at Draper Labs made him uncomfortable.
"I was questioning the value of the work I was doing," says Loh, 40.
Loh quit the internship and finished his years as an electrical engineering student participating in anti-apartheid rallies and other social justice issues. He began working at Alternatives for Community & Environment in 1996. Until he left at the end of February, he had been the organization's executive director for the past nine years. Through ACE, Loh has advocated for better, more affordable subway service. ACE also looks for opportunities to redevelop abandoned buildings in a green and sustainable manner that will produce jobs and ownership opportunities.
Perhaps Mr. Loh finds satisfaction in his current employment. It would be presumptuous to tell him he should have stuck with the internship at Draper.
But in general, it seems like a bad idea to convince “star MIT electrical engineers” that they are of more value to society by becoming “advocates” for things like “affordable subway service.” This is the paradigm advanced by Michelle Obama, when she told college students “to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry”:
Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that.
Teachers and nurses, to be sure. But how many hip-hop sustainability educators do we as a society need?
Friday, February 20, 2009
One Man’s Pork is Another’s Economic Stimulus
Cambridge Chronicle:
The authors of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a., the Stimulus Bill, neglected to affix one of those nutritional breakdown stickers, leaving its pork percentage in dispute. The manufacturer, Pelosi-Reid & Co., insists that their product contains no more than 1% pork – a mere $8.38 billion of unnecessary spending, or the equivalent of the GDP of Burkina Faso. Conservatives have suggested that the breakdown of the “porkulus” bill is closer to 95% pork, 5% stimulus spending.
It seems that the bipartisan era President Obama was going to usher in never quite got off the ground. Conservatives maintain that big government by definition is full of inefficiency, corruption, metastasizing bureaucracy, special interest earmarks, sweetheart pension deals and funding for bridges to nowhere. President Obama on the other hand introduced a new definition of pork, declaring to an audience of Virginia Democrats that stimulus and government spending are one and the same. In other words, all pork is good pork. Which would mean there’s no such thing as pork. “That’s the whole point,” the President remarked peevishly to those who might differ.
Republicans who attempt to contain the spending forest fire are criticized as if they are anarchists. Paul Krugman, for one, claims that we need to expand government from its current 36% of GDP because if we didn’t have air traffic controllers, our airplanes would crash into each other. This is a straw man argument; not even the most libertarian-minded conservative wants to eliminate air traffic control, police or firefighting.
In theory, good government should provide only services that “promote the general welfare,” in the phrase of the Preamble to our Constitution. It turns that the general welfare is not always easily defined, since no public spending benefits every member of the public. People without children might ask how public schools benefit them. Essential national defense projects become labeled as pork when they benefit the Congressional district of defense contractors who make big campaign contributions.
Some examples clearly violate the general welfare standard. The Chronicle recently reported that our taxes paid for Mayor Denise Simmons to travel to a black lesbian conference in Las Vegas. How exactly did this benefit the general welfare of Cambridge taxpayers as opposed to the special interests of the black lesbian population?
My Republican colleague Salim Kawabat recently published a Right View column proposing that Cambridge do more to improve biking in our fair city. I found the idea sensible. I ride a bicycle and I have often wondered why it’s so difficult to get from the Minuteman Bikeway to the bike paths on the Charles River. Why doesn’t someone fix this? But is this just another example of big government earmark spending? One might argue that this would benefit only the special interest group of bicyclists. But one could make just as sound a case for the benefits to the general welfare. If commuters switch from cars to bicycles, traffic congestion is eased. Fewer cars means less noise and air pollution, which improves the general welfare of pedestrians. Furthermore, quality of life improvements to a city serve to attract people (i.e., taxpayers) to shop, dine or move here.
Similarly Vince Dixon’s recent Right View column was enthusiastic about the revitalization that would come from rebuilding local infrastructure like the Charles River bridges. Roads and bridges clearly benefit the general welfare, and you don’t save money by not maintaining them. I’m not as convinced as Vince that maintenance work on existing assets will stimulate economic growth, but that question divides the world’s best economists.
In his inaugural address, the President’s first criterion of government that “works” was “whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage.” A month later at a town hall meeting in Fort Myers, a young man took him at his word and asked the President what he was going to do about his crummy job at McDonald’s. Another woman asked the President for a new kitchen—and was promptly given a new house.
This is special interest lobbying for an interest group of one. Government not as promoter of the general welfare but guarantor of individual welfare. Pork is too kind a word.
The authors of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a., the Stimulus Bill, neglected to affix one of those nutritional breakdown stickers, leaving its pork percentage in dispute. The manufacturer, Pelosi-Reid & Co., insists that their product contains no more than 1% pork – a mere $8.38 billion of unnecessary spending, or the equivalent of the GDP of Burkina Faso. Conservatives have suggested that the breakdown of the “porkulus” bill is closer to 95% pork, 5% stimulus spending.
It seems that the bipartisan era President Obama was going to usher in never quite got off the ground. Conservatives maintain that big government by definition is full of inefficiency, corruption, metastasizing bureaucracy, special interest earmarks, sweetheart pension deals and funding for bridges to nowhere. President Obama on the other hand introduced a new definition of pork, declaring to an audience of Virginia Democrats that stimulus and government spending are one and the same. In other words, all pork is good pork. Which would mean there’s no such thing as pork. “That’s the whole point,” the President remarked peevishly to those who might differ.
Republicans who attempt to contain the spending forest fire are criticized as if they are anarchists. Paul Krugman, for one, claims that we need to expand government from its current 36% of GDP because if we didn’t have air traffic controllers, our airplanes would crash into each other. This is a straw man argument; not even the most libertarian-minded conservative wants to eliminate air traffic control, police or firefighting.
In theory, good government should provide only services that “promote the general welfare,” in the phrase of the Preamble to our Constitution. It turns that the general welfare is not always easily defined, since no public spending benefits every member of the public. People without children might ask how public schools benefit them. Essential national defense projects become labeled as pork when they benefit the Congressional district of defense contractors who make big campaign contributions.
Some examples clearly violate the general welfare standard. The Chronicle recently reported that our taxes paid for Mayor Denise Simmons to travel to a black lesbian conference in Las Vegas. How exactly did this benefit the general welfare of Cambridge taxpayers as opposed to the special interests of the black lesbian population?
My Republican colleague Salim Kawabat recently published a Right View column proposing that Cambridge do more to improve biking in our fair city. I found the idea sensible. I ride a bicycle and I have often wondered why it’s so difficult to get from the Minuteman Bikeway to the bike paths on the Charles River. Why doesn’t someone fix this? But is this just another example of big government earmark spending? One might argue that this would benefit only the special interest group of bicyclists. But one could make just as sound a case for the benefits to the general welfare. If commuters switch from cars to bicycles, traffic congestion is eased. Fewer cars means less noise and air pollution, which improves the general welfare of pedestrians. Furthermore, quality of life improvements to a city serve to attract people (i.e., taxpayers) to shop, dine or move here.
Similarly Vince Dixon’s recent Right View column was enthusiastic about the revitalization that would come from rebuilding local infrastructure like the Charles River bridges. Roads and bridges clearly benefit the general welfare, and you don’t save money by not maintaining them. I’m not as convinced as Vince that maintenance work on existing assets will stimulate economic growth, but that question divides the world’s best economists.
In his inaugural address, the President’s first criterion of government that “works” was “whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage.” A month later at a town hall meeting in Fort Myers, a young man took him at his word and asked the President what he was going to do about his crummy job at McDonald’s. Another woman asked the President for a new kitchen—and was promptly given a new house.
This is special interest lobbying for an interest group of one. Government not as promoter of the general welfare but guarantor of individual welfare. Pork is too kind a word.
Monday, February 09, 2009
With Science on Their Side
The Globe delights in reminding us that George Bush ignored Science to promote his partisan and destructive agenda, while Obama will restore Science to its rightful place. Most recently, your Sunday editorial slipped in a crack on a piece about Obama not wearing a suit in the Oval Office: "The Bush White House may have been decked out in sartorial splendor, but that didn't translate into respect for science, the environment, or the Constitution."
I find this appeal to the authority of science disingenuous. The debate over issues like global warming, stem cell research or safe levels of arsenic in our drinking water are a little bit about science and a lot about politics—enacting legislation and spending public funds. The same facts can lead to opposite conclusions regarding the appropriate political responses. If Democrats claim they have scientific truth on their side rather than defending the merits of, for example, proposed global warming legislation, they are not respecting science; they are exploiting the image of science to cover partisan advocacy.
I find this appeal to the authority of science disingenuous. The debate over issues like global warming, stem cell research or safe levels of arsenic in our drinking water are a little bit about science and a lot about politics—enacting legislation and spending public funds. The same facts can lead to opposite conclusions regarding the appropriate political responses. If Democrats claim they have scientific truth on their side rather than defending the merits of, for example, proposed global warming legislation, they are not respecting science; they are exploiting the image of science to cover partisan advocacy.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Heating the outdoors
Eric J. Chiassen believes that wasted heat from things like our light bulbs will lead to a global warming Armageddon (“The other global warming” 1/25/09). When I was a kid, if I left the door open in the winter my mother would yell, “What are you trying to do, heat the outdoors?” It was funny because anyone with any common sense would recognize that the miniscule amount of heat escaping our house would have zero effect on the outside temperature.
The Globe article did not discuss the data behind Chiassen’s theory, but it did introduce an inordinate number of caveats and questions from skeptics. If a theory that demands replacing oil, coal, gas and nuclear energy with wind and solar were at all creditable, the Globe would have presented it as “settled science.” How about publishing something with some scientific credibility from the thousands of scientists who are skeptical of global warming fairy tales?
The Globe article did not discuss the data behind Chiassen’s theory, but it did introduce an inordinate number of caveats and questions from skeptics. If a theory that demands replacing oil, coal, gas and nuclear energy with wind and solar were at all creditable, the Globe would have presented it as “settled science.” How about publishing something with some scientific credibility from the thousands of scientists who are skeptical of global warming fairy tales?
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