Our Foreign Policy Minsky Moment

If there can be any kind of silver lining to our ongoing “Great Recession” it might be that it has elevated the level of economic discussion, at least slightly. For instance, when’s the last time you heard anyone talking about the “magic of the marketplace?”  On the contrary, a fair number of writers and economists seem to have experienced recovered memories of things the country once used to know – like that a capitalist economy is cyclical and inherently prone to crises such as the current one.  In this, the ninth year of our Afghanistan War, the discussion of our foreign policy cries out for similar flashes of enlightenment.

The most interesting economic concept to emerge from recent obscurity is the “Minsky Moment,” Hyman Minsky having been an economist who described a type of social amnesia that occurs as people will themselves into believing that business cycles are things of the past as they engage in riskier and riskier financial activity.  Admirers of Minsky, who died in 1997, named the point when the dream comes crashing down into the nightmare of the next financial crisis after him.  Minsky saw several stages to the process, as gradual societal memory loss of past depressions and recessions leads to something of a state of euphoria when we may hear arguments, such as heard only a few years ago, that transformative innovations like computerization and the Internet have created a “new economy” of permanent prosperity.

Looking at the course of American foreign policy from the Vietnam War to the current day, it is hard to miss a similar dream cycle playing out there.  After Vietnam, a new sense of modesty came over American foreign policy.  Yes, our military could unleash destruction upon southeast Asia that was in some respects unmatched in world history.  And, yes, we might be able to keep it up indefinitely – we would not be “defeated” in the conventional sense.  But the ultimate message of that war was No: No matter what our military might, we could not impose our will on a country that did not wish to have its system dictated by foreign armies from halfway around the world.

Not every one approved of this national dose of humility, of course.  The “Vietnam Syndrome” was roundly denounced in interventionist circles, as the new reticence toward foreign military intervention steered policymakers toward subversion rather than invasion.  Nicaragua can probably thank the Vietnam Syndrome for the fact that Ronald Reagan merely funded its government’s  political and military opposition rather than engaging in full scale invasion.

But slowly the memories faded and were replaced with new ones.  The first George Bush’s Gulf War did not turn into a quagmire. And Bill Clinton’s bombings of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia sort of returned the country to its old habits. The euphoria stage surely arrived with the second George Bush when a senior adviser to the President could inform a reporter that he was merely ”in what we call the reality-based community” who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality,” while the White House recognized that ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

We have left that stage, clearly. A statement like the above now seems as unimaginable as it did in the first decades after the Vietnam War.  Yet the turnaround is obviously far from completed; the country has not really shed the omnipotence illusion.  For, while the rationale for the Iraq War may now be widely understood as farcical, the Afghanistan War remains on the upswing.

Every war is different, to be sure, and at one point the Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars appeared to have little more in common than the fact that they were on the same continent.  After all, who could be further apart than the communist Viet Cong and the fundamentalist Taliban?  But as time has passed an overwhelming resemblance has come to the fore: Both wars are attempts to “create our own reality” in countries that have many times demonstrated that they will not allow this to happen.

Our foreign policy Minsky Moment, if there is to be one, will certainly not originate in the White House or the Pentagon, though. The White House would be too afraid of the political consequences of facing the facts and the Pentagon would be too embarrassed to do so. We will have to figure out how some other way to wake the country from its dreams.

Nuclear Posture Review: Oops! We Missed One!

In one of the more remarkable public course changes Washington has yet seen, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has added Israel’s name to the previously released short list of exceptions to the general policies articulated in the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review. Originally released on April 6, the Review, which stands as the highest expression of the nation’s nuclear strategy, stated that nonnuclear nations abiding by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty would generally not be threatened with nuclear retaliation for non-nuclear attacks.

The policy did note the exception of “outliers” which were identical to the “rogue states” referred to by the Bush administration. At the time of the document’s release, Gates told a press conference, “There is a message for Iran and North Korea here…if you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.” North Korea is known to have nuclear weapons and Iran is widely thought to be in active pursuit of a nuclear capability.

Now Gates has amended that list, noting that “upon careful consideration we have decided that a realistic appraisal of the situation requires that we acknowledge the existence of another nation widely believed not to be in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty – Israel.” President Obama himself immediately asserted that what he called a “simple policy clarification” implied no change in United States policy toward its closest Middle East ally, saying this “in no way alters America’s commitment to the existence and security of Israel.” The addition, he said, “should not lead anyone to believe that hostilities with our great friend are even remotely anticipated.” He described it rather as a “signal” that his Administration considered it “important to convey to all parties in the region that we see the situation as it really is, not as we might wish to see it.”

Although the President steered clear of further detail, this first American acknowledgment that Israel, a non-signer of the Nonproliferation Treaty, has amassed a nuclear weapons arsenal is seen by many Middle East analysts as representing a potentially tectonic shift in world politics. Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been an open secret for decades. Former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu served 18 years in prison for telling the British press details of the nuclear weapons program in 1986. At the time, London’s Sunday Times estimated its production to be in excess of 100 weapons.

Israel’s first warhead is thought to have been produced in the late 1960’s. The country is also believed by many to have collaborated with South Africa in that country’s development of nuclear arms, before its force was dismantled in 1989 on the eve of the nation’s transition to majority rule. Current estimates put Israel’s warhead numbers at anywhere from 75 to 400; the high figure would likely make the country the world’s third largest nuclear power – after the United States and Russia. Israel’s official policy is to offer no comment on the matter.

Observers attributed this astounding “policy clarification” to delayed effects of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s surprising decision to name the President as the award’s recipient during his first year in office. One White House insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “As you know, the President in no way sought the Prize. In fact, a lot of people around him urged him to decline, thinking that it would place too high a burden of expectation around his future policies. But you see, the thing is the award seems to have gotten under his skin – to the point where he appears to have decided that if he’s ever going to play any kind of role in bringing peace to the Middle East, both sides have got to see him as being reality-based.”

Other sources noted that Gates was considered the right choice to be the messenger of such a bold policy alteration since he has altered it in the past – it is less than two years since the Defense Secretary declared that the U.S. would not forswear first use of nuclear weapons in retaliation for chemical or biological attacks upon the US or its allies, a policy that the new Review repudiates. At the time of his earlier statement, Gates was serving in his current position in George W. Bush’s Cabinet. One CIA source thought it would take several days for world opinion “to sort itself out over this shocking outbreak of candor.”

Okay, so Gates and Obama didn’t actually say anything about Israel’s nuclear arsenal and the way it might make the highly touted new Nuclear Posture Review seem hypocritical. But since the new policy was unveiled in early April, we could hardly wait until next April Fool’s Day to satirize it, now could we? The point of this little thought experiment in candor is not to suggest that any of the actual nuclear policy changes Obama is currently making or proposing are in any way wrong or useless. It is rather to illustrate just how much further the U.S. would need to go in order to actually be seen as “reality-based” in many parts of the world.
Domestically, the current administration is widely viewed as relatively “dovish” on matters relating to nuclear weaponry – at least in comparison to its predecessor. Likewise, the idea of dissuading Iran from joining the world’s nuclear powers is hardly a controversial one here at home. But the presumption that our government therefore enjoys worldwide credibility in these matters runs up against some harsh perceptions: For much of the world, the global campaign to prevent Iran from getting what Israel already has seems to indicate only that the one nation to have ever used nuclear weapons has no immediate plans to change its policies in any serious way.

American Foreign Policy Scripted by Dead German Writers?

A recent headline, “Snuff out militant Islam’s lethal spark – kill bin Laden,” brought to mind a friend’s story about a graduate student he’d once had. This student had felt himself seriously wronged somewhere in the academic process and appeared obsessed with vindication. My friend’s prescription was that he should read “Michael Kohlhaas,” a novella by German writer Heinrich von Kleist.  Since the student’s field was modern American history, the main concern was not the study of literature but the story’s theme – the potential self destructiveness of the drive for revenge, even if a person is actually in the right. Joel Brinkley, the author of the article with the inflamed headline, looked like he might benefit from the same medicine.  And, unfortunately, he’s far from the only one.

When the legal system fails to provide Kleist’s protagonist (based on a real life figure of 250 years earlier) with proper redress after he is wronged by a minor noble, Kohlhaas decides to take matters into his own hands. Eventually he will burn the noble’s house down and raise a private army to repeatedly attack the city of Wittenberg in his attempt to capture the man. His wife will die of injuries sustained in the pursuit of his goal and Martin Luther and the Kaiser in Vienna will become personally involved in the matter. At the very end, he does find that some measure of justice has been done. Unfortunately, that realization comes as he is being led to his beheading.

There was a point when Brinkley, a former New York Times writer now teaching journalism at Stanford, would have raised few eyebrows in writing, “Right now, the most effective thing the United States could do to turn the tide in the so-called war on terror is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the terrorists’ shining symbol.” But that point was eight years, two wars, ten of thousands of casualties, and a trillion dollars ago. Today, such writing conveys the obsession of a real-life Michael Kohlhaas who wants to go on and on and on in pursuit of his concept of justice. Of bin Laden he writes, “We know where he is, more or less [sic],” but “Pakistan refuses to go after him.” His solution?  “I’m not talking about an invasion. Infiltrate the region with special-operations forces.”

How many countries can there be, I wondered, where a journalist writing that sending armed personnel into another country does not constitute an invasion will not be asked to seek professional help? But at least Brinkley does recognize that the Pakistanis might see things a little differently: “Let them scream,” he writes, “Over almost a decade, we have given Pakistan every chance to do the job. Now it’s time to do it ourselves.”

What seems to bother Brinkley most is that “Today, bin Laden must wake up every morning with a smile on his face for all he has inspired.” This he may well do, but probably not quite for the reasons Brinkley thinks.  Bin Laden’s stated goal, let us remember, it to maneuver the United States into a global war against Islam that will spiral out of control. So he’d have every reason to smile if he read an article like Brinkley’s. Ultimately, it’s not columnists like Brinkley who matter, though, but the Kohlhaasian spirit that seems to drive our foreign policy.  After all, while much of the country once dismissed George W. Bush as a hopeless, misguided warmonger and embraced Barack Obama as a peace candidate, this second post-9/11 President appears at least as committed to globalizing this war as his predecessor, if perhaps in somewhat different directions.  From the point of view of tying the U.S. down in endless war, what’s not to like?

But if the strategy of that war seem like something Kleist might have imagined, the tactics bring to mind a far better remembered German writer – Franz Kafka, the rare author influential enough to have his name turned into an adjective. While there are probably as many different definitions of “Kafkaesque” as there are readers of Kafka – and maybe more – “incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, or illogical” will probably do as well as any.  But whatever your personal definition of Kafkaesque may be, American military operations in and over Pakistan will probably fit it.

The current centerpiece of that campaign appears to be a program of missile strikes aimed at “terrorist leaders” from unmanned “Predator” drone planes flying above the country. Officially, though, there is no such program and as a spokesperson for the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says, “We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature.”

The New York Times reports the strikes are “carried out from a secret base in Pakistan and controlled by satellite link from C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia.”  The government of Pakistan regularly denounces them as a violation of its sovereignty. Unnamed U.S. officials claim there is an understanding under which the Pakistani government allows the U.S. to carry out the strikes while the U.S. allows the Pakistanis to publicly denounce the attacks. The government of Pakistan denies this.

Unnamed U.S. intelligence officials frequently name figures they claim have been killed in the strikes. A recent target was Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, whom, the Washington Post says, “a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity” called “one of the worst people on the planet.”  As you might expect, this non-existent program is rather unpopular among the people of the country where its targets live: a Gallup Pakistan poll found it with 9 percent support among the Pakistani population.

The uncertain level of civilian casualties is a growing concern. A United Nations rights investigator complains that “the Central Intelligence Agency is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws.” Unnamed sources within the U.S. government privately assure reporters that civilian deaths are lower than reported. One unnamed government official told the New York Times that the drone strikes are “the purest form of self-defense.”  The C.I.A. had no comment on a report that the private security contractor formerly known as Blackwater – now Xe Services LLC – was involved in the work of actually placing the bombs on the drones.  An unnamed defense official denied it to The Nation magazine – “on background.”

In response to repeated questions about the unacknowledged drone strike campaign at a press conference in Pakistan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would only say that “there is a war going on.” She did not specify to which war she referred. The United States Government acknowledges being at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in Pakistan. Appearing at a memorial service for seven CIA operatives killed in Afghanistan, some of whom were thought to be involved in the planning of the Pakistan drone strikes, President Barack Obama exhorted hundreds of their colleagues “to win this war.”  He also did not specify of which war he was speaking.

In regard to the acknowledged war in Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said, “The Taliban, we recognize, are part of the political fabric of Afghanistan at this point.” He did not say at exactly which point this recognition occurred; the U.S. overthrew the Taliban government eight years ago and has been at war with the organization ever since. Gates went on to say that “The question is whether they are prepared to play a legitimate role in the political fabric of Afghanistan going forward, meaning participating in elections, meaning not assassinating local officials and killing families.” He did not say whether a simple denial of involvement in assassinations and other killings – on or off the record – would suffice in place of an actual cessation of such activities. Nor did he speak to the question as to when various Taliban officials might be removed from the United Nations “terrorist blacklist” that currently prohibits the Afghanistan government from negotiating with them.

I have to think Kleist and Kafka would have loved this material.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Lost in Translation: Electronic Records and Health Reform

A typical day at work will invariably find me hunched over a piece of paper, staring at a jumble of illegible loops and lines, trying to figure out what on earth five loops and a squiggle is supposed to convey to the reader.

No, I am not a handwriting analyst, a historian of ancient writing, or a translator of foreign languages. I am a medical student, simply trying to read the paper progress note of another physician or resident in attempt to figure out what happened to my patient during his visit two months ago. This frustration contrasts to a recent gig at a VA hospital whose medical records and charts are completely computerized; a model system where I was able to breezily click through the past medical history of my patients. As an incoming medical professional in an already digitized world, I am constantly disgusted at the inefficiencies and difficulties that arise from using paper charts.

How Common are EHR’s?

Electronic medical record is one of the current buzz words in the health care field. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine this past spring found that only 1.5% of hospitals have a comprehensive-electronic record system present in all units . Other recent studies have found that a small percentage of physicians’ practices currently utilize electronic health record (EHR) system or CPOE (computerized provider order entry) at all practice locations, leaving a larger majority of our hospitals and health care providers to sift through endless piles of paper every day to learn about their patients.

Costs and Benefits

Those who doubt the inherent benefits of comprehensive EHR implementation put forth the financial objection that estimates over hundreds of thousands of dollars for many physician practices to implement and maintain such a system. However, some studies show that the costs to the health care system created by the problems using paper charts have the potential to outweigh the costs of an EHR in the long-run. More importantly, even if ultimately shown to be cost neutral, effective use of electronic health records have been shown to improve quality and save lives. Many of these quality gains are realized with robust systems that include evidence-based decision support tools to providers.

The Scary Truth

The old joke of physicians having illegible handwriting holds true in my experience: for the majority of physician providers, their writing is difficult to read at best. At worst, it is plain illegible. This creates a multitude of problems in our health care system that is a huge detriment to the efficiency, safety, and the economics and structure of the health care system. The most obvious and feared complications of simple bad handwriting are huge mistakes that can needlessly cost a life.

In its landmark report, to Err is Human, the Institute of Medicine estimated that up to 98,000 lives are lost every year from medical errors.  Not surprisingly, one study found that approximately 90% of  inpatient medication errors occur at either the ordering or transcribing stage.  I see nearly every day how easy it can be to make a mistake with a life-or-death magnitude simply by misinterpreting the wrong word or number from a chart leading to a dangerous drug reaction or an incorrect treatment. Even if I finally correctly translate all of the scribbled notes in the paper chart, it will have taken me five times as long to treat my patient, increasing the time it takes to treat the patient and increasing the chance of an adverse outcome. Talk about inefficiency in health care!

Aside from the danger and inefficiency, medical errors due to paper charts can wreak havoc on many other players in the health care system by causing a high number of lawsuits. When a physician is sued due to a medical error, it drives up the cost of the already sky-high malpractice insurance that all physicians have to pay. While it may seem to the general public that all doctors are rich and live to play golf, many have high debts from school, don’t make the big bucks, and work horrendous hours. Add high malpractice insurance, and this causes financial difficulty for physicians in certain specialties that can cause shortages of some primary care doctors such as obstetricians.

Alternatively, physicians might be forced to cherry pick their patients, only accepting Medicare and private insurance patients, causing uninsured and Medicaid patients to use the ER as their only health care venue, thus shifting the burden of cost to taxpayer’s wallets in the form of hidden hospital fees to compensate for many cases of avoidable uncompensated care. Many critics of EHR within medical field fail to realize that in improving the efficiency and safety of medical records translates far down the line to many aspects of the health care system. Indeed, in a time of health care reform, the transition of paper charts to electronic medical records will play a large role in improving the health care system.

Reason for Hope?

Through the ARRA EHR stimulus, part of the larger stimulus bill, Congress recently set aside $19 billion dollars, or the equivalent of over $40,000 per physician in a practice, to assist in implementing electronic health records (EHR) that meet meaningful use definitions (e.g., CPOE). This is a huge step forward in the attempt to computerize medical records across the country.

As a health care professional, I am excited to see the dedication to the improvement in health care of the current administration and frankly shocked at those who refusal to consider any reform to this health care system that is so obviously inefficient, expensive, and backward compared to any other developed industrialized nation. An entire overhaul of our health care system is required, in which EHR are only one part. However, the same critics of implementing EHR because it is “too expensive” are focused on the short term in all areas of health care reform, battling reform not because they have a better idea, but because they have no idea. I challenge any EHR or health care reform naysayer to step into my shoes for a day to read handwritten patient notes in a paper chart and to make a life or death decision based on an illegible scrawl. Our patients deserve better.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Expected to Fail: Making the Familiar Strange

The achievement gap between White and Minority students – as demonstrated through achievement tests, years of schooling, high school graduation and, more generally, outcomes – is formidable and shocking.The NAEP (National Assessment of Education Programs) compiles an annual report card on the achievement gap including trends and graphs in an overall assessment of progress. The unequal results of schooling are endemic and seem to be built into some part of the system as they continually recur, impervious to minor tweaks on schooling.

Inequity in schools and school achievement limit the opportunities students have to achieve equality in the economy at large as unequal preparation and access determines future positions in the work force. Real differences in resources (i.e., good teachers, computer access, private tutoring, material parts of schools) impact and skew the education system in an obvious and measurable way but are not completely at fault for unequal outcomes.  I often wonder and am even more frequently asked what other factors help explain low achievement, school misconduct, and other social problems in urban schools.

As a society and as learning communities, we’ve grown from the days where we quoted bogus studies about brain-size and differently structured DNA to explain differences in school achievement levels. Work in the sociology of education field rationalizes the achievement gap and school failure by mostly Black and Latino students by pointing to culture, politics, economics, and other social circumstances to explain real differences in educational outcomes. The schools we build and run are not necessarily neutral settings where information and rewards are equally accessible to all students. Social interaction between groups and individuals defines many of the outcomes available to students and the processes that lead to those outcomes. Expectations that schools, teachers, and families place on students are heavily influenced by the achievement gap statistics and attitudes we have related to poverty.

Rationalizations for the achievement gap such as the increasingly popular culture-of-poverty explanations by sociologists affect our schools and teachers as they walk into classrooms every day. [For a discussion on the Culture of Poverty and education and an interview with William Julius Wilson, please see “Thoughts on Education Policy.”] These rationalizations for failure are interestingly challenged through Sociology of Education expert Pedro Noguera’s work at Berkeley High School. The Diversity Project he spearheaded worked to accomplish something we should replicate throughout our failing schools; they worked on “Making the Familiar Strange.” These effects were exceptionally clear to me as I walked into an all-too-familiar parent-teacher night at the school that I work at in New York City.

Parent Teacher Night at Brandeis

I work as a tutor at Brandeis High School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, serving a group of 42 students to succeed academically any way I can. On the surface, it simply involves preparing them for any test that will occur within the next five periods, but I actually spend most of my day being an advocate for them with their teachers.  When some of my students shared with me that they would have liked their parents to come to last week’s parent-teacher conference day – which they couldn’t attend due to work obligations – I stepped in and tried to see as many teachers as I could. No teacher I spoke with at Brandeis wants the students to fail at school or at life, and I’m certain they wish the kids nothing but the best.  However, the ways that a few teachers that I talked with explain failure is exemplary of how the culture of poverty discourse and the expectations that it reinforces are hurting the students it aims to help. The discussion I had with some teachers in some classrooms sometimes turned rapidly to socioeconomic or cultural issues that supposedly preconditioned the students for failure.  When I pressed a foreign-language teacher for examples of shortcomings or specific areas where the student could improve, the teacher insisted that the student had other siblings that had dropped out of Brandeis and that the student should probably be tested for something. Some teachers were sometimes incredibly aware of the existence of problems in the students’ home lives, but were often unsure what problems they were, using the information only as an explanation for their failure in class.

In support of my informal findings in a limited context at Brandeis, sociologist Martin Haberman’s writes in Pedagogy of Poverty: “[R]ecord-keeping is the systematic maintenance of a paper trail to protect the school against any future legal action by its clients. Special classes, referrals, test scores, disciplinary actions, and analysis by specialists must be carefully recorded.” The path of least resistance for the student in school is an unstructured and unchallenging classroom where teachers can create an impossibility for real failure since the expectation of success never exists. The teacher may be compliant because compliance means order and peace of mind within the classroom. And, I should add, because that expectation of success may never exist in the teacher. Haberman argues that unless the definition of good teaching (or even just teaching) is challenged and changed, nothing will improve for struggling urban students. “In the present system, teachers are accountable only for engaging in the limited set of behaviors commonly regarded as acts of teaching in urban schools – that is, the pedagogy of poverty.”

Expanding the argument of how the expectations on minority students ultimately affect their school outcomes, educator Joe Nocera talks about “White Flight” from urban schools. Over the past half century, middle-class parents all across the United States have abandoned the public school system in the big city because of diminished expectations of the schooling offered. Nocera details his own experience and outlines the fears that middle class parents have of the peer group their children will be involved with in high minority urban schools. The school-abandoning phenomenon – which is also practiced by Black middle-class parents – has drained voices and resources from the public school and reinforced the low expectations placed upon it. Prospective public-school middle-class families have bought into the idea of a culture of poverty and frightened of the consequences of negative outcomes for their children have taken them to private school or relocated the whole family to put them in public schools elsewhere.

Making the Familiar Strange – Pedro Noguera and BHS

As mentioned earlier, Pedro Noguera, cognizant of the implicit adherence to this culture of failure by the teachers and school itself at Berkeley High School,  sought out to “make the familiar seem strange and problematic” as part of the Diversity Project. The taskforce was charged with improving the school. In one of their initial meetings Noguera writes that they “understood that the biggest obstacle to be overcome involved the explanations and rationalizations of this phenomenon that already existed in the minds of most people. Data on the attrition of minority students and on their performance in academic classes had been publicized and made available to the entire school and community for many years.” In order to make the school realize what it was doing, Noguera and the Project challenged the teachers to question their assumptions on why the students were succeeding and why they were failing. One of the first activities of the Diversity Project took the teachers through the neighborhoods where most of their students lived. The cultural and community resources embedded in these neighborhoods had been previously ignored. Even teachers that grew up in those very neighborhoods now saw them as breeding grounds for academic failure! The Diversity Project asked the teachers to look at these neighborhoods and their denizens in a different way.

Another interesting activity accomplished by the Diversity Project was to divide the teachers into four rooms that challenged “familiar” concepts within their schools and forced them to understand them as “strange” outcomes. One such strange concept was published in national newspapers because of both how familiar and strange it was.

The analysis of 9th grader GPA by zip code and median household income (shown below) shows the shockingly straightforward relationship between household income and mean GPA. The more the 9th graders family earned at home, the better the grades he or she received at school. Other room presentations showed teachers the frequency of minority students in remedial classes, the racial differences in choosing extracurricular and after-school activities. (White students were disproportionately represented in activities that could enhance one’s academic performance, i.e., debating team or academic clubs.)

While the research conducted in the definition of the culture of poverty highlights some important issues needed to reconstruct confidence and reinform minority students, the realities of expectations that teachers and school systems have on the students shaped by belief in this culture of poverty or belief in insurmountable obstacles is also often at play in the classroom. Noguera’s work shows the value in working with the schools to transform their expectations and make them appreciate their current role in the reproduction of inequality and the opportunities accessible through change.

From my own experience, I have learned that when the hopes of teachers are encouraged and transformed into real actions for improving the quality of teaching, the possibility of bringing about substantial change in schools can be realized.

Conclusions

The “Culture of Poverty” and lower expectations may have affected some City teachers for decades. For some teachers, their understanding of achievement gap research informs their idea of where “urban students” come from and leads to generalizations that end up damaging student opportunities and academic outcomes.

One of the important lessons here is that systemic reaction to research is an important consideration in publishing. Education policy needs to be informed by great research in education, and the achievement gap is certainly an issue that needs that kind of focus and exploration. However, realizing the crucial role that expectations play in the classroom education policy should also work to condition teachers to use this research as a rallying call against racial injustice and not as an excuse for continuing failure. Pedro Noguera’s goal of “making the familiar strange” should serve as a fine example for all teachers and administrators on how to properly react to familiar, pervasive failure.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Gallup, Abortion, and Shades of Gray

With the economy, health care reform, environmental regulation, and other important issues being widely discussed in policy circles, it would be easy for one to forget about wedge issues, such as abortion. However, with the news of the shooting of  Dr. George Tiller, among other recent acts of extremist right-wing violence, and the debate over a new Supreme Court nominee, abortion is back on the front pages.

In this light, I decided that I would take a deeper look into a recent poll that was conducted by Gallup that found changing attitudes toward abortion in the US. Gallup’s results showed that for the first time since they began polling the issue 14 years ago,  more Americans identify themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice”.  According to this new poll, virtually all movement in public attitudes toward the pro-life position has occurred within the past year.  After reading about these results, I had several questions, including:

1. The dramatic shift in the past year looked a bit odd to me.  Could Gallup expand upon the bottom-line reasoning from their reporting?
2. What was the party breakdown of the poll? It doesn’t mention weighting, but perhaps they did weight. (If I remembered correctly from the Presidential tracking polls in 2008, one of the big differences between Gallup and Rasmussen was that Rasmussen weighted and Gallup did not, leading to more swings in the Gallup tracker.) My concerns here were that a smaller, more extremist Republican tent, could indicate a misleading swing if they were still weighted at their 2008 levels.
3. Relating to #2, I recently read that Gallup had nearly a 50/50 split in Party ID in this poll. Was this correct?
   

Thanks to my former graduate school classmate, Cynthia English, a Gallup writer and researcher, I had the honor of having my questions answered by Lydia Saad, a Senior Editor at Gallup who worked on this poll. Ms. Saad gave very thoughtful answers to my questions and went above and beyond what I expected. Here are some of Ms. Saad’s responses:

• Kevin’s memory is correct; we do not weight our surveys by Party ID. Although some pollsters do it, weighting by Party ID is not the standard in national RDD surveys. Party ID is essentially a political attitude like every other that we measure; and while it is generally stable from one survey to the next, it does change over time and is susceptible to survey-to-survey variation due to the content of a given survey. Weighting by party ID on election polls, for example, can be problematic since it’s asked after the candidate preference ballot, and therefore largely mirrors the ballot. To weight by party ID on these surveys is to essentially weight by the ballot.

• We did obtain a near 50-50 split in leaned party ID on the 2009 May Values survey. Because this was unusual, we did two things to check the validity of the data. We re-ran the abortion questions on the G1K track two days later, and obtained nearly the same results. That survey had a 10-point advantage for the Democrats on leaned party ID. We also did a post hoc reweighting of the data by party ID, using targets giving Democrats/Dem leaners a 14-point advantage (typical of what we’ve been getting on recent stand-alone polls) and re-ran the survey results . (This was for internal analysis only; we are not publishing the reweighted figures.) The figures changed by only 1-2 points in most cases – indicating that the party distribution of the sample did not account for all or even much of the change seen in the abortion trends. However, as noted in point A, we don’t consider the party ID distribution we obtained in the survey “wrong” just because it was different from what we obtain on other surveys. Thus, we stand behind the published figures based on our standard Census-based demographic targets.

• As highlighted in the story, and expanded on in the “bottom line” analysis, the major change in abortion attitudes over the past year was seen among Republicans and independents who lean Republican. Thus, even if we were to hold party ID constant across the two surveys, attitudes would have become less friendly to abortion rights because Republicans moved to the right, while Democrats stayed the same. The question is, why did Republicans become more conservative in their views on abortion? The “pro-life” side has been eager to attribute it to the “success of their efforts” on the issue. I’m dubious about that. Without a high profile “pro-life” campaign over the past year to attribute this to (which I can’t),  I would expect to see that sort of attitudinal change happen more gradually. This was abrupt. The major change that’s happened is that Obama was elected, and since he is “pro-choice” and those views have been forefront in the news over the Notre Dame flap, I think it’s reasonable to hypothesize that this has compelled some.

• The external validation component is very important. We are not alone in showing a shift toward the “pro-life” position (or anti-abortion position, in the case of legality questions). Aside from Gallup, four other organizations have come out with abortion data in recent weeks, and all of them show a more “pro-life” stance than they did in their last measurement in 2008 (all pre-election).

• “PRO-LIFE” V “PRO-CHOICE”
  Gallup Values survey shows a 7 point increase in “pro-life” and an 8 point decline in “pro-choice” (May 08 vs. May 09) SWING=15 POINTS.    Gallup G1K survey shows a 6 point increase in “pro-life” and a 7 point decline in “pro-choice” (May 08 vs. May 09) SWING=13 POINTS.    Fox News shows an 8 point increase in “pro-life” and 6 point decline in “pro-choice” (September 08 vs. May 09) SWING = 14 POINTS.    CNN shows a 1 point increase in “pro-life” and a 4 point decline in “pro-choice” (Aug 08 vs. April 09) SWING=5 POINTS.

• LEGAL/ILLEGAL
  Gallup Values survey shows a 3 point increase in “legal in only a few/illegal in all” and a 4 point decrease in “legal in all/most” SWING=7 POINTS.    Gallup G1K survey shows a 5 point increase in “legal in only a few/illegal in all” and a 6 point decrease in “legal in all/most” SWING=11 POINTS.    Quinnipiac shows a 3 point increase in “always/usually illegal” and a 5 point decline in “always/usually legal.” (July 08 vs. April 09) SWING=8 POINTS.    Pew shows a 3 point increase in “always/usually illegal” and an 8 point decline in “always/usually legal” (Aug 09 vs. Apr 09) SWING=11 POINTS.

Given these responses, I think it is fair to say that Gallup and others are on to something. There does seem to be a change, albeit possibly temporary, in attitudes toward abortion. Given this change, several questions come to mind:

1. Is reporting about abortion with only two binary options the most appropriate way of showing public opinion? What are some other options to polling about abortion?
2. Will this change be permanent or just a temporary blip in public opinion due to reasons that Gallup points out?

As far as reporting such polling results as binary options (”pro-choice” v. “pro-life” or always/sometimes legal vs. always/sometimes illegal), Gallup also thankfully breaks down its legal/illegal question into four categories. Granted, opinion on abortion is probably more nuanced than four categories, but it is encouraging that Gallup offers these details:

• Legal under any circumstance (change from 2008 to 2009):  -6 points
• Legal under most circumstances: +2 points
• Illegal under most circumstances: – 3 points
• Illegal under all circumstances: +6 points

While it is possible and in fact likely that many Republicans who once had a nuanced position on abortion now identify themselves in the extreme given the polarization of the GOP tent and the fear of an “abortion-loving president” from the talk radio set, the movement away from the “legal under any circumstances” category is still a bit  perplexing by the “Republican Party being more extreme” movement theory.  Are there really many Republicans who just one year ago thought abortion should be legal under any circumstance who now are 1.) Still Republicans AND 2.) No longer hold this position?  It’s possible, but definitely not as likely or as easily explainable as the movement toward the “illegal under any circumstances” camp.  Perhaps this cross-tabulation is just random noise, which wouldn’t be surprising since the margin of error is going to be much higher among these subgroups.

What are some other approaches for asking about abortion?

While I commend Gallup for asking about this question in more than a strictly binary fashion, it’s important to point out that there are other possible ways of asking about abortion that could possibly lead to very different baseline conclusions.  Paul Rosenberg does a nice job of summarizing the findings of the General Population Survey (GPS), which gives survey respondents three different abortion scenarios and asks them to indicate whether they think abortion should be illegal in:

1. None of these cases
2. One of these cases
3. Two of these cases
4. All of these cases

Since many people may have a hard time defining exactly what “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are (Gallup admits that it doesn’t necessarily endorse these terms, and hence uses them in quotes), this approach is nice because it conceptualizes the issue in three nuanced situations, ranging in acceptability.  By using this approach, the GPS finds that only 9% of respondents believe that abortion should be illegal in all three given cases.  This is not to say that this bottom-line result is more accurate than other polls, as it is  asking about slightly different things. (It’s also important to note that these numbers are not meant to in any way dispute Gallup’s trend, but rather to show that a different interpretation of baseline values could be made by using a slightly different methodology.)

What does this mean?

The book Myth of a Polarized America further explores some these issues and argues that most of the “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” debate is in fact media driven and that most Americans actually lie somewhere in the middle, holding a nuanced opinion about abortion and other social issues.  In this light, is it possible that media reports that only repeat binary results of such wedge-issue polls encourage the narrative of a divided, polarized America?

Although recent right-wing extremism may be afoot, it is important to remember that most of those that are pro-life are anything but extremists.  Despite what they may tell pollsters, one can legitimately argue that most Americans hold nuanced views that deserve nuanced reporting that respects the complexities that are inherent in such social issues. Given the apparent sudden change in attitudes, it will be interesting to look at this issue again in five or six months or in a year to see whether this is a short-term blip in response to the first brand-new Democratic President in 16 years or a sudden, sustainable change in public opinion.  The best period to which to compare this recent movement would be 1993, when President Clinton first took office. Unfortunately, 1993 was two years before Gallup began polling this issue.

Bottom Line

I applaud Gallup and others for looking in-depth at these issues and hope that the mainstream media can begin to report such public attitudes and beliefs with the nuance and respectful tone that they deserve.  Like most things in life, abortion does not involve mutually exclusive sets of ideas and values for most individuals.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? What’s at Stake in Cairo: A Conversation with Former Presidential Speechwriter, Troy Senik

On June 4, a very popular President Obama will deliver a much-anticipated speech to the Arab world in one of Islam’s most culturally and historically rich epicenters — Cairo — a location that is at the same time symbolic and strategic. Symbolic in that, despite its less than perfect record on human rights protection, Egypt has long been seen by American diplomats as a potential bellwether reform state in the Middle East. Whether through Anwar El Sadat’s bold overtures toward peace with Israel in the 1980s (that led to his brutal assassination) or Hosni Mubarak’s early 21st century assurances of democratization — however hollow — Egypt has expressed at least passing interest in leading the Arab world into modernity. This fact has not been lost on those who believe a lasting Middle Eastern peace will only result from a systemic and attitudinal sea change that is sparked by open-minded Arab leaders. Strategically, setting the stage for Obama’s speech in Egypt’s capital city also serves the purpose of inviting the least vitriol from our friends and enemies; though it goes without saying, of course, that the diplomatic anthill of Arab politics would’ve burdened any choice with at least some scrutiny.

As complicated as the mere choice of venue can be for a politically- and emotionally-charged speech, consider also the debate raging on our own soil currently over the administration’s near-total embrace (astutely noted by Charles Krauthammer) of Bush-era detainee and citizen surveillance policies. Despite Obama’s euphoric relationship with large swaths of the American public throughout the campaign and into his first 100 days as Commander-in-Chief, the cold, hard facts of a post-9/11 security reality have put the administration at odds with the very people who regarded the man as saint and savior less than six months ago. Throw in a growing concern with our Israeli allies over the Likud party’s unwillingness to move toward a two-state solution and one can undoubtedly bet that our domestic and diplomatic tensions are being taken in and poured over with deliberant intent by the Arab audience Obama means to engage, and influence, in early June.

With so much at stake for the administration and U.S. foreign policy, generally, the task of penning the Cairo speech is most certainly a daunting one. And, though no one doubts the speech will be given with the president’s usual degree of bold eloquence, the process of defining the message and the words that will carry it is often one that involves an incalculable mixture of research, meditation and sheer epiphany.

Troy Senik, former presidential speechwriter for George W. Bush and current contributor to Real Clear Politics and the Center for Individual Freedom, knows this dynamic very well. Following is a conversation between Mr. Senik and myself, where he discusses presidential speechwriting, what’s at stake in Cairo, and how – while most of us were sliding comfortably into bed for the evening, during his tenure in the Bush administration – he was just hitting his stride, pouring himself another steaming cup of coffee as he walked the hallowed halls of the White House with a legal pad.

RB: Ben Rhodes, foreign policy speechwriter for President Obama, has outlined the upcoming speech in Cairo as a next step in the process of building positive relationships and dialogue with the Muslim World. He has referred to Obama’s overture to Iran in January as the start of that process. However, many of Obama’s critics are wary of missing an opportunity not to meet the frequent human rights missteps and looming security threats of most Arab governments head-on. Do you see his upcoming speech as a chance to facilitate more engagement with the Arab world, or to deliver a tough message on nuclear non-proliferation and human rights protection?

TS: It will probably be a little bit of both. One of the dangers of White House speechwriting is that every speech goes through what’s called the “staffing process.” That means that all of the relevant folks in the Executive Office of the President and the bureaucracy get their hands on the speech and try to insert their own points of view and their own policy agendas. I’m sure there will be talk about non-proliferation, but it will probably be just that: talk. President Obama has waved his finger at regimes like North Korea and Iran already, and they’ve cheerfully ignored him because they’re confident that there’s no penalty for ignoring him.

As for human rights and democracy promotion, it will be interesting to see if he takes that message abroad. Those were both big parts of the Bush Administration: the “Freedom Agenda” and the Bush Doctrine, respectively. But, Obama has basically kept quiet on both of those issues thus far in his presidency.

I think the upshot is that the Administration desperately wants to convey the message that America is not at war with the entire Arab world. That’s a noble goal, but it’s also something that we’ve been trying since 9/11. I don’t think it necessarily makes the president look weak, but I think it does make him look like he doesn’t have much of an idea of how to deal with the Arab street beyond giving a speech.

RB: The choice of Cairo has been panned by some in the West because of Mubarak’s backsliding on human rights protection in recent years, and by the Arab world, due to Cairo’s pseudo-alliance with Israel, in which Egyptian police have safeguarded the tunnels into Gaza, among other reasons. How important is choosing the location in giving a speech of this magnitude?

TS: It’s important. Egypt may not be an ideal choice, but it’s the Obama Administration’s least worst option. Obama promised a speech in the Muslim world. He can’t do Saudi Arabia, because it’s a cradle of radicalism, a state that we support primarily because of our need for its petroleum, and a totally atavistic society. He could go to Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, but it looks incoherent to give a speech in Southeast Asia when everyone knows your real audience is the Middle East. Jordan is not an option because their relationship with the U.S. has historically been close enough that it would look like Obama was looking for a sycophantic venue. Turkey has been too politically aligned with Israel and would lead to the speech being rejected out of hand by Arabs. So, Egypt certainly has stains, but if you’re looking to reach out to the Arab world, all of your options are states with pretty pockmarked records.

RB:And, obviously, Israel would have been a security nightmare, in addition to presenting a situation closely paralleling the Jordanian dynamic you mentioned.

TS: Right. And going to Israel to talk about the Islamic world would be suicidal. It would be the best possible way for Obama to simultaneously alienate the world’s Jewish and Muslim populations.

RB: Which brings up the issue of how far Obama is willing to go to obtain the first fruits of a peace accord with the Muslim world. The build-up to Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington was primed with shots across the bow from Obama and the Israeli PM, both seemingly frustrated with the other’s perceived next steps in the realm of Arab diplomacy. Obama, and Bush before him, in addition to countless scholars and former diplomats, have advocated a two-state solution. Does Obama have enough political leverage, at home and abroad, to alienate (even if slightly) Israel to achieve better relationships in the Arab world?

TS: Well, that question really gets to the heart of one of the biggest fallacies in the world of diplomacy, which I know for a fact is embraced by a huge swath of the people working in the State Department. The idea is that you make the Arab world like us more by sticking it to Israel. And I think that’s absolutely untrue.

Can Obama put some sunlight between himself and Israel? Sure. But will the Arab states like us as a result? No. They’ll be happy that they’ll have marginally less difficulty in trying to eradicate Israel, but they won’t be carrying American flags through the street anytime soon — at least not unlit ones. The reality is that all the Arab governments really want from us is to keep buying their oil, stop defending Israel, and stay out of their part of the world. So, the only way you can make them happy is by being a supplicant for their cartel, turning your back on the only long-standing democracy in the region, and pretending that Islamic extremism, terrorism, and their routine violations of human rights aren’t a problem. And by any rational standard, that is way too high of a price to pay.

RB: Does the debate over Guantanamo, in which Obama swears to reengage American detainee policy with jurisprudence and constitutional reverence, contribute to how Obama’s speech will be received in Cairo?

TS: Probably more on the domestic side than the international side. The foreign audience might be mindful of the fact that he’s ending up much closer to the Bush Administration’s policies on some war measures than was initially expected, but they know that Obama is a different kind of guy at his core than President Bush was.

On the domestic side, however, it may actually be a problem. With Guantanamo, the interrogation memos, the Pentagon photos, etc., Obama has reached his first real impasse with the public. This week, people started realizing that the administration has no plan for how to close Guantanamo and what to do with the people being detained there. And when you talk about putting these people on American soil, and you learn that 1 out of every 7 we’ve released in the past have gone back on the battlefield, you realize that this isn’t the law school hypothetical that everyone’s been treating it as for the past few years. So I think the public’s had their first widespread dose of skepticism towards Obama, and if he goes to Egypt and gives a speech that looks overly deferential to people who don’t like us, it’s going to compound that concern, especially since that’s starting to look like a pattern for him.

RB: Right. And, this comes at a time when he’s enjoying 64% approval ratings on national security – an undoubtedly pleasing fact to Democrats who’ve struggled against Republicans in this area for years, though just as likely a campaign-resilient and unsustainable number.

Your point also brings to mind a recent piece by Jacob Weisburg at Slate, “What we’ve learned so far about President Obama,” in which the author “continues to suspect him of harboring deeper convictions.” He references reversals on torture and “Don’t ask, Don’t tell.” In light of this possibility, that Obama hasn’t quite found his footing in the Oval Office with regards to where political philosophy and the real-world meet, is this speech pre-mature, or is it absolutely necessary given Iran and North Korea’s recent belligerency, in addition to the constant tension elsewhere in the Arab World with Western ideals?

TS: I suspect that in the long view it’s simply irrelevant. Obama is fond of talking about “game changers.” This isn’t one. He’ll go and give the speech and capture the media cycle for a day or two, but that will be it. Unless he has some unanticipated “Let them come to Berlin” or “tear down this wall” moment, it will probably be forgettable. And I see no indication that there’s anything that bold brewing in the White House. So in the end, this probably gets him nowhere.

RB: Referencing his overture to the Iranian people, again, who were celebrating Nowruz — the Persian New Year — during his address in January (a fact he used to link our shared humanity with the Iranian people), would the impact of the Cairo speech be any more or less significant by speaking to the citizens of Arab nations versus the leaders?

TS: It would be much more significant if Obama chose to speak to the Arab people instead of their governments. There is a long tradition of American presidents speaking directly to the populations of nations with whom we have strong disagreements because the American view has traditionally — and rightly — been that we oppose governments, not peoples. That being said, I don’t think Obama will do that for two reasons. One, something that dramatic would indicate that we think of the entire Arab world as essentially hostile dictatorships. Two, you have to be very careful about stirring up the populations in those countries, because in some cases, mass movements would actually yield even worse regimes than the current one (that’s certainly the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt).

Also, an important note about the New Year message to the Iranians. While it was addressed directly to the people, it made clear reference to the “Islamic Republic of Iran.” That is Obama’s way of legitimizing the current government there and telegraphing that the U.S. is not seeking regime change. And that’s about as dispiriting a sign as you can get if you’re an Iranian citizen who hopes to live in a freer society.

RB: Do you think he missed an opportunity in the January address?

TS: Yes, but that error was fathered by the policy. The mistake was saying you’re going to basically endorse a dictatorship. Sometimes, reasonable constraints may force you to tolerate a dictatorship, but you never endorse one.

RB: Earlier, you mentioned the complex nature of vetting a presidential speech, especially when it comes to speeches of this magnitude – the “staffing process.” Before a speech gets to this point, though, what were the first steps you took when preparing a speech for President Bush?

TS: You would get a description of the speech and the goals a few weeks in advance, then have the research team gather background material. Depending on the magnitude of the speech, you’d then usually get some guidance from senior staff or the president himself. From there, you’d try to hammer out an outline and/or a rough draft, which for me often consisted of walking the halls of the White House at 11 PM with a cup of coffee and a legal pad. In the Bush White House, the writers would then edit the first draft and send it into the staffing process.

RB: Was Bush the kind of president that poured over every word and turn of phrase, or was he concerned less with specifics and more that his central thesis be present?

TS: President Bush was relentlessly focused on the logic of his remarks. Sometimes that would translate into a focus on minutiae, sometimes it wouldn’t. But often times how much he dove into the details of a speech would be determined by how passionate he was about the topic. The most important thing was that he could see a coherent structure and feel like every point logically flowed into the next one. Like his father, I think he was a little distrustful of high-flying rhetoric. He certainly wouldn’t have attempted a lot of the fireworks that Obama does.

RB: It isn’t surprising that Bush differs in this respect from Obama. David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, was quoted in a recent Politico piece as saying, “Everyone here sort of lives with the reality that the president is the best speechwriter in the group,” a sentiment also captured in Weisburg’s piece, noting Obama’s penchant for wanting to run the business of the Oval with a high degree of personal oversight.

TS: Yes, and that has to be intimidating. Given Obama’s talents as a writer and a speaker, I’m sure he’s much more intimately involved with the process than most presidents.

RB: What’s the most that Obama, and his speechwriting team, should expect out of a speech to the Muslim world that comes while the U.S. wages two wars in the Middle East? What would you like to see him say?

TS: They are probably expecting some softening in the Arab world’s attitude towards the U.S., but I’m deeply skeptical of that. Speeches can change the hearts of the people, but they almost never change the interests of governments.

I’d like to see him come out strong in favor of universal values instead of doing a multicultural soft-shoe. I’d like to hear him say that peaceful and benevolent religion is an incalculable gift in every corner of the world that it inhabits, just as radicalism is a scourge that must be defeated no matter where and why it takes root. If the nations of the Middle East really crave the international legitimacy they always talk about, they have to be willing to play by the rules of civilized nations and stop using their past and their real and imagined grievances as excuses for violence and tyranny.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? I Changed My Mind on Employee Free Choice

Berkeley is filled with bumper-stickered cars. One of a Berkeleyite’s favorite hobbies is telling everyone what his socio-political opinions are by declaring them on the bumper of his car. That car is most likely either a Toyota Prius (with its increased gas mileage, it saves the planet) or the Subaru Outback (which not only gets good mileage, but every model has all-wheel drive: great for the Berkeleyite’s frequent trips out to nature).

One of my favorite bumper stickers is: “Unions: The folks who brought you the weekend.” And it’s true. In this country, we can thank labor unions for a lot of the things we take for granted today in our jobs. Before labor unions, there was no redress for employees who were working long days in unsafe conditions. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle was supposed to be about the horrible working conditions that slaughterhouse employees had to endure, but as Sinclair famously said, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident hit its stomach.” The Jungle is famous not for its exposure of deplorable working conditions, but for its graphic depiction of unsafe food preparation.

It wasn’t until 1935 that Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, which affirmed government support of unions, collective bargaining, and placing restrictions on what employers could do. At the turn of the century, businesses viewed unions with a combination of suspicion and disgust. Unionizing was socialism, and socialism was antithetical to the United States and its tradition of capitalism. Eventually, though, the country grew up and realized that the employer-employee relationship was hideously skewed in favor of the employer. In an industrialized economy — that is, an economy where people work for others instead of themselves — employers have tremendous power to enhance or destroy the lives of employees by hiring or firing them. And because an employee is a single person, he has little recourse when faced with the considerable power of an entire company.

Enter the union, the job of which is to leverage the power of all the workers in a firm against the firm, should it become necessary. Unions today enter into legally-binding agreements with firms. These agreements specify things like benefits and wage rates. When a union agreement is about to expire, it needs to be renewed. At this time, the union and the management each tries to re-negotiate the contract to get the best deal. If the two sides don’t come to an agreement by the time the contract expires, then the union members go on strike. They will refuse to work without a contract specifying exactly what their benefits will be.

But you’ve got to have a union first. According to Robert Reich, formerly Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and now a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, 1/3 of working Americans belonged to a union in 1955. In 2009, only 8% of workers belong to a union. Part of this trend has to do with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. But even this doesn’t entirely explain the decline in unionization: Toyota, the most profitable auto manufacturer in the world, is a non-union shop. Its workers are not unionized, but they have good wages and benefits. Toyota is a benevolent employer. Wal-Mart is quite the opposite. Its workers make a little above minimum wage and they largely have no benefits. Wal-Mart is famously and virulently opposed to unions, engaging in practices that, if pursued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), would probably be prosecutable in court. Wal-Mart has closed entire stores rather than suffer the possibility of unionization. We cannot always rely on the benevolency of employers in order to get good wages and benefits — hence the existence of unions and a national framework that supports them.

I have written before about the current process of unionization, as have other Demockracy writers, and I will not go into it here. Again, we come around to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would augment the current system of union creation. Again, I have before explained how it would work. In my previous pieces, I came out against EFCA because it does not have a secret ballot. How, I said, can we get an accurate assessment of whether or not people want to unionize without a secret ballot? I neglected another factor: employer pressure between the initial petition and the actual election. During this period, which usually lasts between 30 and 60 days, employers dramatically increase pressure on employers not to form a union. This pressure can vary from the benign (”workshops” in which union-busters explain to employees why unions are actually bad for them) to the criminal (openly threatening employees with termination if they join unions). Starbucks was found guility of the latter when it fired some employees at a Manhattan store who tried to unionize.

It is this pressure period that causes the disparity we see between the numbers in the initial petitions and the actual elections. An apocryphal 1989 AFL-CIO organizing document declares that, according to its statistics, 75% of employees at a firm need to sign the intitial petition in order to get 51% in the final election. There has not been a study (that I have access to!) that examines the causality of this phenomenon. It could be attributed to peer pressure; that is, when employees’ names are visible, employees will say they want to unionize, even when they don’t. In the privacy of the secret ballot, they are free to vote against the union. But there is another possibility: that employees really do want to unionize, but after two months of propaganda and open threats, employees decide that they don’t want to unionize, after all, due to the possibility of losing their jobs. We have no way of knowing what employees truly want, since there is no test we have that is free from bias, whether from the employer or other employees.

Even though it’s illegal for an employer to fire — or even threaten to fire — an employee for unionizing, it happens routinely. As is pointed out in this sourcebook on EFCA from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, employers treat NLRB fines (the punishment for violating labor law) as just another operating cost. They will gladly fire employees and then pay the fines, since, in the long-term, paying the fines is cheaper than dealing with a union. Fortunately, one of EFCA’s provisions is to increase the penalties for violating labor law, but even then, the fines are still not so large that the world’s large anti-union companies — Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Whole Foods among them — cannot write those fines off as operating costs and call it a day.

The only way to forestall those threats is to allow union creation immediately, which is the point of EFCA. It assumes that the initial petition is the gold standard for union desirability and declares that, if a majority of employees state on the petition that they want to unionize, then a union is immediately formed. This way, employer interference in the unionizing process is minimized.

Contrary to anti-EFCA propaganda, the legislation does not “eliminate” the secret ballot. If a union petition garners greater than 30% but less than 50% of employees’ approval, then the secret ballot process is initiated. EFCA does only what makes sense: namely, if at least half of the employees in a firm support a union, then the union is created. The in-between time is often useful only for anti-union employers, who will use the time either to persuade or to threaten.

So, I’ve totally changed my opinion of EFCA. All else equal, making union formation easier is not a bad thing.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Same-Sex Marriage: Obama’s Lincoln Moment

On Wednesday night, Governor John Baldacci of Maine signed legislation that he struggled to support. While governors are often pressed by their legislatures and constituents to support laws that they do not necessarily agree with, this bill—one that legalizes same-sex marriages—was a personal dilemma for the first-term governor. After weeks of agonizing over the decision, the Governor released a statement to the press that outlined the reasoning behind his eventual approval:

In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.

The first governor to sign a same-sex marriage bill, Baldacci touches on the heart of the same-sex marriage debate: The arguments for or against same-sex unions based on morality, religion, tradition, or any other logic is irrelevant. What matters is the law. And the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution that he refers to clearly states “[no] State [shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Which means that, like it or not, from Baldacci’s perspective, gays and lesbians should be entitled to the right to marry if straight people are allowed to marry.

Over the course of the past several months, four states have legalized same-sex marriage in their states: Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, and New Hampshire (Massachusetts legalized gay marriage back in 2004). Recently, both New York and Washington D.C. have decided to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. And now there is talk that New Jersey may become the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage in the coming months.

Throughout this civil rights upheaval,  President Obama and his administration have remained conspicuously mum. According to the New York Times, Obama has said that as a Christian he opposes gay marriage but remains a “fierce advocate of equality” for gay men and lesbians. And so far, he has remained true to that statement by pledging to sign a U.N. declaration, which Bush refused to sign before he left office, that calls for a worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality (the United States was the only western nation not to support the measure). Moreover, Obama has continually recognized qualified persons with same-sex sexual orientations for top level jobs: In his short time in office, he has appointed numerous openly gay officials for executive administrative positions and may be considering two prominent lesbian lawyers to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.

Although the saying goes that “actions speak louder than words,” his silence is an action that may indicate his political discomfort with gay rights advocacy. During the election, he reiterated that same-sex marriage is an issue that should be decided by the states. And, to a certain extent, he’s constitutionally correct: There is currently no federal marriage license that any straight couple can apply for but, then again, opposite-sex couples who marry in their home state trust that their marriage will be honored no matter which state they travel to or live in. And while there is no federal law regulating straight marriages, the 1996 Federal Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress regulates same-sex unions. The Act explicitly outlines that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions performed in other states. That is a gross discrepancy.

While Obama has said that he supports a repeal of that legislation and of the military’s “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy, he has remained virtually silent on the gay marriage issue since he took office and has chosen to not comment on the landslide of same-sex marriage laws in recent months. Although this issue may not seem like a priority for the administration when they have an economic crisis and two wars to contend with, it should be a priority for the president since Obama has repeatedly stated that he wants America to rebuild and renew its reputation in the world. In a 2007 article he wrote for Foreign Affairs, he stated:

At moments of great peril in the last century, American leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy managed both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation. What is more, they ensured that America, by deed and example, led and lifted the world — that we stood for and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders. […] They used our strengths to show people everywhere America at its best.

Yet, how can those freedoms be realized if America does not follow its own laws and ensure that all of its own citizens receive the same “protection” under the law? If President Obama is going to continue to reiterate that marriage laws should be left to the states, then he should actively pursue a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act since it is a federal measure. So too, if he wants America to “lead by deed and example” then he must show support for states that have passed inclusive marriage legislation and encourage others to do the same. It sets a very bad “example” to have some areas of the country have more “freedoms” for its citizens than others.

Or, Obama could take a cue from his favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln took office in 1861, he viewed slavery as a states’ issue and expressly stated that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.” However, two years later, he delivered his Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves because it was “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution.” Certainly, it is thorny comparison between slavery and gay rights and America is not in a civil war where gay marriage is, like slavery was, the catalyst for domestic combat; nevertheless the United States is at a civil rights crossroads that needs to be addressed by the President. Had Lincoln chosen to never take that stand on slavery, decided to put it off until later, or thought he could leave the responsibility on to the next administration, Obama may have never even had a chance to be our president. Obama should take a page from the book of his presidential idol and realize that, regardless of the political risk, he is obligated as America’s national leader to stand up for the rights of all Americans.

Obama has continually said that he wants his presidency to speak to and for all Americans. In his famous Democratic nomination acceptance speech, Obama evoked Martin Luther King and reiterated that “now is the time” for the United States to rebuild and renew:

[I]n America, our destiny is inextricably linked, that together our dreams can be one. “We cannot walk alone,” the preacher cried. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

Indeed, we cannot turn back and now is certainly the time.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Starry, Starry Plight: Obama and the Space Program

Space enthusiasts are watching and listening carefully to find out how President Barack Obama will support NASA during his administration. Earlier this year he gave the space agency a glowing endorsement:

When I was growing up, NASA inspired the world with achievements we are still proud of. We cannot cede our leadership in space. We need a real vision for space exploration. Let’s also tap NASA’s ingenuity to build the airplanes of tomorrow and to study our own planet so we can combat global climate change. Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world, make America stronger, and help grow the economy.

Before we dive into recent developments, a brief review of NASA under George W. Bush is in order. NASA achieved some laudable feats in the last eight years, notably:

• It greatly expanded the International Space Station (ISS) to add more solar panels, laboratories, and living space (with contributions from other nations, notably Russia and Canada).
• It successfully landed two Mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) that have been sending pictures back for 5 years, much longer than originally anticipated.
• It repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope, which has sent more than half a million images back to Earth.
• It developed the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which will take astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
• It launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has produced sensational images of Mars.

In particular, the string of successful trips to Mars stands in stark contrast to previous missions. Historically most attempts to explore the Red Planet have failed, including one notorious disaster in 1999 caused by a mix-up of measurements made with the metric and English systems.

Yet since the achievements of the Apollo program that landed astronauts on the Moon, there hasn’t been a program that has evoked the same widespread level of interest here and abroad. Indeed in March President Obama made reference to this in an answer to a reporter’s question about the shuttle program

NASA has yielded — or the space shuttle program has yielded some extraordinary scientific discoveries. But I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a sense of drift to our space program over the last several years. We need to restore that sense of excitement and interest that existed around the space program. And shaping a mission for NASA that is appropriate for the 21st century is going to be one of the biggest tasks of my new NASA director.

Sadly as of this writing, The White House’s Technology Page does not include any mention of the space program. Obama has not yet appointed a new NASA administrator, though rumors have been circulating this year about the possible pick of astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. Anyone who has seen Tyson on PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW cannot deny his charisma and enthusiasm for astronomy and space exploration. Tyson is currently the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and is famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for advocating the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a “dwarf planet.”

Financial support for NASA remains strong despite the severe worldwide recession. The fiscal year 2010 budget of $18.7 billion is $2.4 billion above the 2008 amount. The first priority listed in their budget summary is climate change monitoring and research. President Obama has repeatedly mentioned addressing global warming as a top issue, as noted in my last article.

NASA scientist James Hansen continues to be a fierce advocate for action to combat global warming. In 2006 he complained that the Bush Administration was trying to silence his dire warnings for political reasons. In December 2008, James Hansen and his wife Anniek Hansen sent an open letter to then President-Elect Obama (and his wife Michelle Obama) urging him to phase out traditional polluting coal plants, support an aggressive carbon tax plan, and encourage R&D of modern nuclear power plants.

Many people are sad to see the end of the successful space shuttle program, currently scheduled for 2010. If and when the shuttle program is canceled, Florida residents may bear the brunt of the employment fallout with 8,000 or more jobs on the line. However a congressman and congresswoman from Florida have introduced legislation to keep the shuttle program alive a bit longer.

The new Orion spacecraft and companion Ares Launch Vehicles are presently in the testing phase. NASA expects to fly the first missions in 2014 or 2015, leaving us with at least a four-year gap in the government’s space transportation system. (Private companies will carry supplies to the ISS, and the Russian Soyuz will be used to rotate crews.)

The James Web Space Telescope (JWST), often described as the successor to Hubble, is currently in development and expected to be deployed in 2013. NASA intends to keep Hubble in operation until at least that time, to avoid any interruption in data collection. JWST is substantially larger than Hubble, though lower in mass. Hubble detects light in the optical and ultraviolet ranges, and can be repaired in space, while JWST will collect data only from infrared light. Nevertheless, JWST will allow scientists to peer substantially further back into the distant past, closer to the origin of the universe.

There have been reports that Obama might combine some space programs from NASA and the Pentagon. The Pentagon’s space budget is significantly higher than NASA’s total budget, and some observers wonder whether the space vehicle gap might be filled in by the military. The merger discussions have been fueled by the fear that China has strong military intentions for its own space program.

While the U.S. must be mindful of threats to our security from other nations, a strong militarization of NASA would be an unfortunate turn of events. NASA was founded during the Eisenhower Administration to conduct non-military space activities. Obviously there is already significant overlap in personnel, and technology flows in both directions. But it would be very sad if NASA becomes distracted or subverted by security issues.

Other controversies still brewing include:

• Arguments about whether robots or humans should be sent to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.
• Whether we should ever bother going back to the Moon.
• Calls for President Obama to fire NASA’s inspector general Robert Cobb — a recent New York Times editorial accused him of being unethical and ineffectual.
• How much we should cooperate with other nations’ space programs.
• An oldie but a goodie–whether NASA should even exist given all the problems we have to solve on Earth.

Despite the criticisms and controversies, the space program is a vital part of our national identity. It has inspired generations of students young and old, capturing their imagination like nothing else. The dream of human flight and exploration will not go away as long as birds take wing and stars and planets twinkle. NASA must survive and thrive during Obama’s time in office, so we may continue to watch over our pale blue dot from space and keep looking at the stars.

(Thanks to Michael Conway for suggesting the title of this article.)

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