Tilting at Gay Marriage

If you want to make a conservative look really dumb, bring up gay marriage. Yes I know evolution is great for laughs too. (Gaps in the fossil record? Bwahahahaha….) But nothing quite captures the vapidity of conservatism as the gay marriage issue – exposing them as empty dogmatists, whose beliefs are fundamentally based on nothing but belief itself.

1. Biology

Conservatives often come at gay marriage by attacking the state of being gay – characterizing it as deviant, if not abhorrent – as some aberration that at best deserves tolerance, not respect or validation.

But being gay is natural, normal, and COMMON. On the spectrum of human traits, it’s somewhat less common than being left-handed, but much more common than being red-haired. We know, furthermore, that homosexuality is rooted in biology, not personal choice, because it occurs universally across all human cultures – past and present – and because it’s (weakly) hereditary. It occurs in many other animal species. Among bonobos – our closest genetic cousins (with chimps) – gay sex isnt just common – it’s the norm: sex between females occurs more frequently than any other kind. (Bonobos, those clever apes, have also discerned the advantages of oral sex and the missionary position – without the benefit of adult videos or the internet.)

Conservatives will assert that marriage is fundamentally about having babies – incognizant (or willfully ignorant) of marriage between septuagenarians and other infertile couples. Marriage does indeed have a biological basis – as does sexuality: it’s all about the pair bond. Anyone who argues that sex is all about having children likely hasnt had very much of it – or had much fun at it.

2. Culture

If culture should guide us, conservatives need to buckle themselves in: worldwide, polygamy is quite common, and has been for much of human history. Culture, furthermore, is dynamic, and western culture now commonly accepts and endorses gay marriage. Numerous Christian and Jewish denominations accept gay marriage among their adherents, and even perform religious marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples.

3. Semantics

When all else fails, a desperate conservative’s last parry is the assertion that marriage is “defined” as being between one man and one woman. But try as you may, you will not a single modern dictionary that does not include “gay marriage” as one definition of “marriage”.

Gay Marriage is among those rarest of issues, where there’s just one side to the argument. That’s why the acceptance and institutionalization of gay marriage is proliferating throughout the US and across the developed world. Gay Marriage to a conservative is like a windmill to Don Quixote – the attack is as irresistible as it is futile – and laughable. Their only weapons are bigotry and ignorance – and our observance of their folly greatly aids our development of a pathology of conservatism.

While being gay is quite normal and natural, conservatism in many respects resembles mental illness – one hopes that a treatment may someday be had.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sexual_social_behavior

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/marriage

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/marriage

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/marriage

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marriage

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/marriage_1

Our Dumb Trust Fund

Ever wonder why we need a trust fund for Medicare and Social Security, but not for other stuff? Congress creates spending obligations all the time – as it did recently with the Farm Bill. So if the US can borrow to meet its obligations to Monsanto and ADM, cant it also finance granny’s hip replacement and grandpa’s groceries? Hell yeah.

It’s all just taxes and spending. We could just as easily have a Farm Bill Trust Fund and-or a Defense Contract Trust Fund – and if they get depleted, Congress could send big companies a big apology instead of a big check. The difference is that – unlike defense contractors or hedge fund managers or the usual beneficiaries of Congressional largesse, for whom the US has incurred a sizable debt – the US by law cannot borrow to pay for medical care or pensions for the elderly. That stuff has to be paid for in advance – and here’s the kicker: it has to be paid in advance by wage earners.

And thus we have the farce known as the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. They have unnecessarily taken TRILLIONS out of the paychecks and pockets of ordinary wage-earners – shifting the tax burden off of the relatively wealthy who pay ordinary income taxes – onto low-wage-earners who primarily pay payroll taxes.

Faux News is fond of recrapping their grand old dropping – that 50% of all Americans pay no income taxes. Faux Newsmodels, it seems, have never inspected a McWorker’s W2. On it, they’d discover that payroll taxes (AKA FICA) are applied as a FLAT TAX ON INCOME, from dollar one, on up to $114,000 – no deductions, no exceptions. You may be a student, you may be on Food Stamps, you may be making $7.25 per hour – tough luck, bub, pay up. Combining the shares paid by employee and employer, it amounts to a flat tax of 15.3%. Hedge Fund Managers – if you’re curious – pay a flat tax of 15%.

FDR’s original rationale for the trust fund was innocent enough: to keep those tax receipts separate from general revenue, so the government couldnt use them for other purposes. But that admirable aim has been perverted, and Social Security has been changed from pay-as-you-go into pay-in-advance, socking it to the working poor.

As any CFO will tell you: it’s way better to have the benefit of something today, while paying for it tomorrow. Tax-deferment is big business – when it comes to paying taxes, later is better.

ADM and Monsanto dont have to worry about the solvency of some government trust fund to be assured that their corporate welfare checks arrive on time. Congress can be relied upon to send them their Christmas Bonus via a “Farm Bill.” And deficits dont matter – as long as the money’s going to their campaign donors, Congress is happy to throw it around. Unemployment Insurance? Cant afford it. Social Security? Gotta pay in advance. Agriwelfare? Step right up!

Ironically, this is a special time for the Trust Fund. For most of the past 30 years, the Trust Fund served to jack up taxes on low-income wage-earners. For now, the Trust Fund is roughly breaking even. But when the debate begins again, as it always does, the usual Very Serious People will make Grand Claims that we (meaning: you) need to shore up Social Security and-or Medicare for the next 75 years – by jacking up payroll taxes on working people today. It’s a lie.

Old age insurance, disability and health care for the elderly is no different from defense spending or cushy tax regimes for the super rich – it involves taking money from some people and giving it to others. Rich folks get the benefit of financing – poor people should too.

Refs:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/overhauling-the-farm-bill-the-real-beneficiaries-of-subsidies/254422/

http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/04/12/fox-still-pushing-falsehood-that-half-of-americ/178594

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund

PS David Cay Johnston devotes a chapter of “Perfectly Legal” to attacking the rationale behind the Social Security Trust Fund – 10 yrs since he wrote it, its still worth a read, as is the entire book.

PPS It really doesnt matter if the assets in the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds are worthless IOUs (as right-wing wingnuts insist), or the safest securities on planet Earth (per their worldwide capital market valuation). If they’re worthless, then the debt they represent is also worthless – which conveniently reduces the debt by $5T, creating lots of extra borrowing room. If the assets are real, you dont need the extra borrowing room – you’ve got assets. The value/valuelessness of the Trust Funds is a red herring –

Why the Death Penalty Needs Killin’

There’s a reason the death penalty has all but disappeared from the modern world – it doesnt fit into any modern political philosophies. For libertarians, it’s an unjustifiably dangerous power to grant a government: it poses a huge threat, but accomplishes little good. For liberals, it’s inhumane, irreversible, and unequally applied – which is especially problematic given the US’s flawed criminal justice process. In short, whether your political philosophy has it that government is a necessary evil; or that it’s a tool for positive change, there’s simply no place for the death penalty.

The US and Japan are the two holdouts. (Japan’s execution rate has been about one-sixth that of the US over the past 20 years.) The only countries that execute more people than the US are Saudi Arabia, China, Iran and Iraq. Right behind the US on the list are North Korea, Pakistan and Yemen. Sometimes you’ll look around at the other guests at the party – and realize you shouldnt have come.

If, instead of looking at the number of executions, you look at execution RATES, it’s even creepier. One informal study found that in 2010 Alabama and Mississippi ranked 8th and 10th respectively, with a rate of 1 execution per 1 million inhabitants – bracketing #9, Saudi Arabia.

Since conservatism contains no principles, the death penalty fits in fine. Government is big and scary when it forces you to wear a motorcycle helmet or puts warning labels on Marlboros. But killin’ folks? Pass the grits, y’all – big government, small government – it’s all good to a conservative.

When pressed, a conservative is prone to cough up several unconvincing “rationales” for maintaining the death penalty into the 21st century. The good news is that they’re all meritless. The bad news is that a rationale to a conservative is a bike to a fish (and-or lipstick on a pig).

1. It’s a deterrent

Nope. The few studies purporting to show otherwise are statistical bus-wrecks – they fail to distinguish between capital and non-capital murder; they limit their sample to particular states and time-periods to obtain their results (data mining); they fail to weigh the effect of the death penalty against life without parole or other punishments. But dont take my word for it – the National Research Council dismissed the ENTIRE body of research in their 2012 report. And for what it’s worth, the view that the death penalty is NOT a deterrent is shared by 87% of all criminologists.

2. It’s cost-effective

Not even close. Taking a capital case to its gruesome conclusion will run you $2 million to $5 million – while life without parole cases can be wrapped up for a cool 1 mil. Incarceration costs vary widely among the states, averaging $30k per prisoner per year – but just $20k in Texas, e.g. (which would rank 8th in executions if it were its own country – beating out North Korea). You can lock ’em up a good half-century and still come out ahead. Of course if the US repealed the Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeus Corpus, offin’ folks might cost pennies on your incarceration dollar. That’s the calculation made by certain conservative Congressmen, who effectively tried to do just that back in 2005 with their Orwellian-named “Streamlined Procedures Act.” (It never became law.)

3. It’s just

It’s just what? Oh – “justice!” – but even if we politely avoid extending the logical justness of killing killers – to raping rapists, burning arsonists, beating up batterers and other 11th century niceties – we’re left balancing this “justice” against the prospective injustice of executing the wrong guy. This naturally leads you back to another basic reason why the death penalty has itself been killed in practically every advanced nation: it stands to do far more harm than good.

Dispensing with conservative “rationales” will not change an opinion that wasnt based in fact or logic to begin with. We’re forced to confront the reality: that conservatives like the death penalty simply because they like it. Killin’ folks is awesome, period.

Liberals and libertarians need to change the terms of the debate. Killing killers doesnt make you “tough on crime.” It makes you soft on human rights and lax on limited government. It means you’re so frightened by criminals, that you’d sacrifice your liberty to be rid of a few more. There’s a reason why half of the specific rights in the Bill of Rights are rights of the accused: the founders werent afraid of criminals – they were afraid of government power. If conservative policies must be driven by fear, then in this case they should be fearful of the police power, prosecutors and courts – and not so happily empower them to kill people. As Ben Franklin put it: a man who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither – and will lose both.

Refs:

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=13363

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13363

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/sep/21/death-penalty-statistics-us

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/29/death-penalty-countries-world

http://ourtimes.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/executions-in-2008/

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-execution-rates

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777460.html

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-about-deterrence-and-death-penalty

https://www.law.columbia.edu/law_school/communications/reports/summer06/capitalpunish

http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=82

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts/the-death-penalty-and-deterrence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Cost

http://www.aclutx.org/blog/?p=1021

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year

http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/ltc/

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2005-08-12/284237/

Worked to the Bone II

We left off asking why it is that Americans put in so many hours compared to workers in other rich countries. The short answer is: it aint the American work ethic – it’s backward American labor laws. And ironically, one consequence of forcing workers to work so much – is that fewer working-age Americans actually choose to work, compared to workers in many other rich countries.

Unlike EVERY other rich country in the world – and many poor ones too – the US guarantees to full-time workers ZERO paid vacation days. Sort of astonishing when you take a step back to look at the numbers: legally required vacay in most western European countries is 4-7 weeks. In the US: 0. How about paid holidays? In Europe, typically about 10 paid holidays per year. In the US: 0 again. In many rich countries, workers, by law, get 30-40 paid days off per year. In the US: 0.

Next there’s paid parental leave. The US is one of 4 countries that do not offer it – the other 3 are Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. The typical benefit in rich countries is 3-4 months of paid leave – often at full pay. In America: 0.

The difference between the US and the rest of the world is legislation – American labor laws have not been updated since the 19th century. Even when Americans are fortunate enough to have paid vacation, they’re often unable to take it, for fear of sending the “wrong signal” to employers – that they’re not workaholicky enough. To cure this problem, many countries not only require paid vacation, but they require that it be taken.

Left to free markets, workers will never get much time off. The average American full time worker only takes 16 paid vacation days – less than the statutory minimum in practically every rich country.

Conservatives tend to be selectively stupid when it comes to free markets – even something so basic as supply and demand. When work becomes more valuable – when it comes with benefits like unemployment insurance, paid vacation time and maternity leave – more people want to work. This goes a long way toward explaining why labor force participation rates (LFPR) – the fraction of working age people actually at work – tend to be higher in northern European countries that have progressive labor laws. Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are tops in LFPR, with rates of 78-83%. Germany, UK, NZ and Canada – all of whom have paid parental leave and mandatory paid vacation time – are close behind at 77% AND RISING. The US is down at 73%… and dropping. Labor laws in the US suck – Americans have responded by staying out of the work force, compared to people in other countries. Yet another workplace reality that Ayn Rand and her disciples failed to incorporate into their joke of an economic model.

Looking at unemployment rates, the US also compares badly with countries with far more generous unemployment benefits. Unemployment insurance is part of labor compensation – thus more UI means more compensation, which means more people will want to work. Only a conservative can pretend to not to grasp so simple a relationship. According to Forbes, the countries with the cushiest unemployment benefits ALL have less unemployment than the US: Sweden, Finland, Germany, Israel, Norway, Japan.

Conservatives fantasize about a Europe with progressive labor laws and widespread unemployment – people hangin’ out and collectin’ welfare. Reality is the opposite: Europe has proportionately more working-age people at work than the US. The difference between liberal and conservative views on employment law is that liberal views are legitimate theories, grounded in reality. Conservative blather persists in a factual vacuum – they are not theories, but dogmas – accepted on faith without evidence. And as with all matters of faith, they are not amenable to fact or logic. Europe has an exceedingly generous welfare state – and people are therefore MORE likely to go to work.

Being fundamentally without principle, conservatives can take any stand on any issue. A party that pretends on Monday to be pro-family should be expected on Tuesday to push for paid maternity leave. But conservatives instead reserve Tuesdays for yet more vapid sermons on small government and less regulation – which translates into: sorry, mom – get back to work – just like they do in Lesotho and Swaziland. So maybe it’s not a coincidence that an American baby is twice as likely to die in its 1st year compared to babies born in other western countries – but dead babies arent factored into conservative “pro-family” ideology – no more than motherhood.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2013/08/13/paid-time-off-forget-about-it-a-report-looks-at-how-the-u-s-compares-to-other-countries/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/maternity-leave-paid-parental-leave-_n_2617284.html

http://qz.com/167163/countries-without-paid-maternity-leave-swaziland-lesotho-papua-new-guinea-and-the-united-states-of-america/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/22/maternity-leaves-around-the-world_n_1536120.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/your-money/us-trails-much-of-the-world-in-providing-paid-family-leave.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/12/among-38-nations-u-s-is-the-holdout-when-it-comes-to-offering-paid-parental-leave/

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LFS_SEXAGE_I_R#

http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/27/unemployment-benefits-world-forbeslife-cx_mw_0627worldunemployment.html

Worked To the Bone I

Conservatives did their usual thing with a recent CBO report on the ACA – the real dumb ones didnt understand it and said a bunch of stupid stuff. The dishonest ones – who’ve long appreciated the benefits of saying stupid stuff to a base only too happy to hear it – did the same. The press dutifully reported their inanity as “viewpoints” if not “information.”

After 48 hours spent spewing the lie that the ACA will cost 2 million jobs, things have cooled down – but the typical dim conservative has now stored it as “fact”. We’ll surely hear the lie repeated right on through the 2016 election – because that’s the way it goes in conservative politics. The dumber your constituency, the freer you are to say what you like, no matter the facts.

The reality behind the CBO report is that the ACA has given workers more options. No jobs are going to be eliminated because of new ACA benefits, but rather, as CBO says explicitly, workers are expected to CHOOSE to work fewer hours – as a matter of personal preference. People arent getting fired or seeing their hours reduced. The new law simply provides workers with new opportunities – to work less to care for children or elderly parents – or simply to take some personal time – without worrying about losing their health insurance. Economists pass no judgment on your desire to work more or less – any more than they’d judge your choice of ice cream flavors – it’s a matter of pure preference – de gustibus non est disputandum.

But the entire episode passed without pundits seizing on this fundamental fact: Americans work far more hours than people in other rich countries. Compared to the 1790 hours worked by the average American full-time worker per year, the average Canadian works 1710; the average Brit: 1650; the average Dane: 1550; and the average German: 1400!

For fear of perpetuating the stereotype of the lazy, party-crazy German, and the sober, hard-working Mexican, I hesitate to mention that, within OECD, Mexicans work by far the most hours (2200) – 55% more than Germans. The EU conflict between Greece and Germany could be attributable to cultural differences: hard-working Greeks put in 40% more hours than indolent Germans – more than 2000 hours per year.

But America’s not losing its nose-to-the-grindstone edge anytime soon – CBO says that total hours worked by already worked-to-the-bone Americans will still increase over the coming decade – only that the increase will be smaller than it would have been in the absence of the ACA. How much smaller? 2%, tops. Given that Americans are already working 5% more than Canadians, 10% more than Brits and 35% more than Germans, this cannot possibly be a serious concern. For the average American worker, less is more – especially when it’s the worker who’s making the decision to work a little bit less. Conservatives are all about personal choice – except when it concerns real people making real life choices. After all, what’s liberty without the freedom to be a slave?

Pondering these numbers, one might grow curious as to why Americans put in so many hours compared to workers in other rich countries. Is it a superior work ethic? Not nearly. Tune in Friday when we investigate the source of long American hours.

Note: The Field Guide, effective this week, will have new material every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with the possible threat of Bonus Material on weekends. Yes it’s true that Krugman only does 2 columns per week – but CT loses far less time dodging undergrads and trimming his beard….

Refs:

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45096

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-cbo-20140204,0,3106578.story#axzz2tWReHhfk

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-semro/affordable-care-act-a-job_b_4741300.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cbo-botched-health-care-law-rollout-will-reduce-signups-by-1-million-people/2014/02/04/c78577d0-8dac-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

Love Thy Nuke

Liberals cringe at the mention of Ralph Nader – in whose absence, Al Gore would have taken Florida, and Bush Duh’s containment in Texas would have been secured.

When they oppose nuclear power – in favor of wind and solar – liberals dont appreciate that they’re repeating the same error. In rejecting nuclear, you dont get wind and solar – they arent real options yet. You get coal and gas. A recent Scientific American article describes the exceedingly slow market penetration of new energy sources. It took oil, coal and gas decades to become widespread – the path for renewables promises to be just as long. Nuclear energy is a solution for the here-and-now.

The issue is NOT whether nuclear power is good in the abstract – what matters is that it’s far better than the real alternatives right now – and thats why liberals need to get behind this wagon and push.

The first step is understanding just how bad coal is. Of 92 naturally-occurring elements on planet Earth, coal, the all-time dirtiest fuel, contains 76 of them – including such toxins as mercury, lead and arsenic, and radioactive elements: uranium, thorium and cadmium.

About 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury can make the fish inedible in a 25-acre lake – a typical coal plant emits 170 lbs of mercury in a year – and 100 lbs of lead – and 200 lbs of arsenic – and 4 lbs of cadmium – and 1,000,000 lbs of undifferentiated particulate crap. Even if you could capture everything that comes out the smokestack (you cant), the waste ash left behind is radioactive. Yes, you heard right: coal plants produce radioactive waste. And because coal-ash disposal isnt as rigorously managed as nuclear waste, coal ends up delivering 100 times more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear.

Simply put: coal really sucks. One estimate blames coal for 25,000 premature deaths in the US each year. And we havent even mentioned CO2! “Clean coal” – which doesnt exist – is about carbon-capture – NOT about all the other crap that goes into the environment when you burn it.

Natural gas is far better than coal. It gives off virtually no particulates or SO2, and much less NOx. It produces no waste ash. It’s also become quite cheap because of recent development in North America, and the difficulty of overseas export.

The fly in the ointment for gas is CO2. While it only puts out about half the CO2 per unit of energy (compared to coal) – it’s still an insane amount of CO2 – and so gas fired plants are not going to help curb emissions. Gas is way better than coal – but nuclear beats them both. Close to zero CO2, SO2, particulates and NOx.

Contrary to popular myth, nuclear power is the safest energy source the US has ever had, without exception. The civil US nuclear industry has to date killed… nobody. Death toll from Three Mile Island: 0. Death toll from coal since Three Mile Island: 750,000. More Americans have died cleaning the turbines of windfarms and falling off the roof while tending to solar panels.

The sticking point on nuclear power SHOULD be cost – but the high cost comes from rigorous safety standards, and the fact that the nuclear power industry internalizes ALL of its production costs – including waste management. Gas is cheap as long as you dont factor in environmental degradation (global warming). Coal is cheap until you factor in ruined lakes, asthmatic children, and lead, arsenic and mercury poisoning. (Did I mention that coal sucks?) Put otherwise: the costs of nuclear power are higher but they are real – the cost for fossil fuels are only nominally low – the real cost of their use is much greater. Liberals in any case should be should be willing to pay a bit more for energy that doesnt ruin the environment or sicken people.

But liberals time and again get stuck on the risk of accidents and on waste disposal. The US has had precisely one major nuclear accident – Three Mile Island – which led to precisely ZERO deaths. The record on civilian nuclear waste disposal is impeccable. Safe storage is challenging, but achievable. If the US would permit reprocessing, the quantity of the material to be stored would drop by more than 90%. The material is encapsulated in glass, then steel, then usually concrete too, then stored underground. Always helps to recall the alternative: fossil fuel waste storage happens in your children’s lungs, in your backyard, and your local forests and lakes.

There are psychological processes that work against nuclear power. People are concerned by the spectacle of thousands dying in a discrete area because of an accident. They are less concerned by more abstract processes, caused by coal plants, that REALLY KILL 25,000 people EVERY year – simply because those deaths are spread out in time and space. A similar process was on display a few years ago, when 14,800 people died in France in a heat wave. If it were a mid-air collision of two jumbo jets killing 1/10th that number, it would have been big news. 3,000 people died in 9/11 – but 30,000 die every year in the US from the flu, and yet no countries get invaded. This is how coal kills – quietly, in hospitals, a few at a time – not very photogenic – makes for really dull reporting. But it’s no less real – and way more deadly.

Nuclear power is safe and clean – its industry is mature and has an unmatched safety record. Renewables may be the future – but nuclear is the bridge that gets us there, without losing the planet along the way.

Refs:

http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/11/07/myths-and-facts-about-nuclear-power/196793

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-global-transition-to-renewable-energy-will-take-many-decades/

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Nuclear-Wastes/Radioactive-Waste-Management/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Waste_disposal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_States#Environmental_impacts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Environmental_impacts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html

http://www.desmogblog.com/coal-power-industry-united-states-facts

http://web.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_coal_industry#Annual_excess_deaths

http://www.psr.org/resources/coals-assault-on-human-health.html

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/whats-the-deadliest-power-source

Thomas v. Marshall

We begin not with Clarence Thomas, but the remarkable jurist he replaced: Thurgood Marshall. Even if he never sat on the Court, Marshall would be remembered as one of the great attorneys of his generation – successfully arguing the biggest case of the 20th century – Brown v. the Board of Education – and coming away with a unanimous decision. Marshall won 29 of 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Count – and another 14 out of 19 as US Solicitor General. Fighting to expand American civil liberties for more than 50 years, first as a civil rights litigator and later as an Associate Justice, Marshall’s contribution to American society compares with any lawyer or judge of his era.

Clarence Thomas, however, was NOT nominated to the Supreme Court for his talents, but in spite of them. He’d been an undistinguished civil servant when he was nominated to the DC Circuit. After just 16 months as an undistinguished appellate judge, he was nominated to the Supreme Court to fill Marshall’s seat.

The ABA gave Thomas the lowest rating of any Supreme Court nominee of at least the past 40 years. ALL of the Court’s other 8 current Justices, as well as retired Justices Souter and Stevens, were unanimously rated “Well-qualified”. Thomas, by comparison received 13 votes of “Qualified”, and 2 votes of “Not Qualified” from the 15 member panel.

The past 23 years have borne out the ABA’s judgment. Thomas has been a cipher – silent during oral argument – and so outlandish in his opinions that he can rarely get four other justices to sign on. The one area in which he’s distinguished himself is in his assault on the rights of prisoners – advocating to make prison beatings permissible under the 8th amendment. (Yes, really.) Thomas isnt a bad justice – he’s an abomination.

Thurgood Marshall would be remembered as a great jurist even if he had never sat on the Court – Clarence Thomas should never have sat on the Court, even if no one had ever heard of Anita Hill or Angela Wright. Their accusations – well-evidenced and entirely credible – unfortunately distracted from an equally valid concern: that Thomas was AND IS unfit to be on the Court – not only for his poor character, but for his incompetence.

Every so often, as happened recently, Thomas is heard to whine about our modern sensitivity regarding race. Perhaps he is so unreflective – perhaps no one ever delivered the news: in the absence of those sensitives, Thomas would never have been nominated to the Court. His condemnation of affirmative action is utter hypocrisy: he had no trouble with it when he was its beneficiary. Thomas likes to recount how his Yale law degree was scoffed at by prospective employers, skeptical that he made it into Yale on the strength of his talents. Perusing some of his many hysterical lone dissents – defending a strip-search of a 13 year-old girl for 2 Advil tablets; insisting that the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional; arguing for a presidential power to hold a US citizen indefinitely, without going before a judge; and at every opportunity: that beating prisoners, no matter how brutally, is fine under the 8th amendment – one reasonably wonders what Yale saw in him.

To be fair, not a single Justice on the Court today bears up in comparison to Marshall. But in one Court opinion after the next, and one interview after the other, far from washing out the stain with which he arrived to the Court, Thomas has only deepened our conviction that not only was he an absurd successor to the remarkable Thurgood Marshall – but that he lacks the minimum of skill, judgment and conscience required of his office.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas

http://news.yahoo.com/clarence-thomas-on-race-194104252.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-clarence-thomas-grew-to-hate-affirmative-action-2013-10

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/clarence-thomas-affirmative-action_n_3491433.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/03/nation/la-na-clarence-thomas-20110703

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-04-alito_x.htm?csp=34

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19910828&id=T9c0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=aW4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6853,7569388

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1991-08-31/news/9102020960_1_clarence-thomas-thomas-nomination-judge-thomas

http://blogs.sacbee.com/i-tool_tips/2009/07/aba-ratings-of-federal-court-n.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-6696.ZD1.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/savana-redding-strip-sear_n_220717.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_v._Pelzer

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/news/2013/07/09/69044/clarence-thomas-the-anti-thurgood-marshall/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/hank-johnson-clarence-thomas_n_3512999.html

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/clarence-thomas-silent-but-sure/

http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/24/clarence-thomas-continues-his-long-war-o

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/04/cruel_but_not_unusual.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/01/clarence_thomas_in_juan_smith_eyewitness_dissent_after_another_harry_connick_sr_case.html

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2009/06/25/will-media-start-calling-justice-thomas-out-of/151521

American Poverty: ‘s real, yo

We’ve all heard the ugly conservative spout over dinner: America has no “real” poverty – in the ‘hood, it’s wall-to-wall Nikes, iPhones and gold chains – and they’re all overweight from eating McDonald’s every day.

It’s true that poverty measures are imperfect – and that their design is as subjective as our views on what constitutes material deprivation. However there are many other measures – which are not subjective – which corroborate the poverty rate, revealing an America with far more poverty than other developed countries, and especially high poverty rates for children.

Simply: we know that poverty in America is real because it’s effects are real. That is, the people we identify as poor are measurably different from other people in many ways. This is the key insight for anyone with doubts about measures of American poverty.

American children born into poverty are more likely to engage in crime later in life. Girls who grew up in poverty are much more likely to have babies as teens, and outside of marriage as adults. Poor American children are far less likely to be reported as being in excellent health, and are more likely to have asthma, diabetes, hearing, vision and speech problems. As they move into adulthood, they are more likely to have heart disease, and are more likely to die at any given age.

Poor kids are 50% more likely to die before age 14, and twice as likely to repeat a grade, be expelled or fail to finish high school. The gap in college graduation may be as high as 50 percentage points.

Remarkably, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, brain scans of poor American children are markedly different: their brain structures related to memory, emotion and speech are visibly smaller – and such differences have been correlated with deficits and difficulties throughout life.

To go with the highest child poverty rate in the developed world, America also has very high child mortality. American children are twice as likely to die before their 5th birthday compared to children in most other rich countries. American infants are about twice as likely to die in their first year compared to infants in countries with the lowest infant mortality rates.

Poverty typically is measured either in relative or absolute terms. A relative measure – like the one used by OECD – defines poverty as being below a function of some percentage of a country’s median income. An absolute measure – like the one used by the US Census Bureau – fixes a definite poverty line, based on the ability to consume a specific basket of goods and-or services. There are also hybrid measures – but America’s poverty rate is high no matter the method you choose.

Across countries, the generosity of social welfare is highly predictive of the poverty rate. Contrary to conservative mythologies, generous welfare tends to reduce poverty, and is not correlated with high unemployment, crime, government debt, or other ills. The fact that health care is very expensive in the US tends to mask the pittance that the US spends on welfare, compared to other countries with much lower poverty rates. Almost all of the increase in aid to the poor over the past 40 years has come in the form of Medicaid.

In other rich countries, with lower poverty rates, aid to the poor primarily comes in the form of cash. The US began long ago with cash subsidies, but has since moved more toward in-kind support: Medicaid, Food Stamps, housing, e.g. – seemingly with the philosophy that the poor cant be trusted to make spending decisions. And research shows that cash transfers are far more effective at reducing poverty.

AFDC/TANF – the programs designed specifically to aid poor families with children – have seen deep cuts in benefits since the 1970s – while poverty rates for the under 65 population have increased. Before AFCD became TANF (in the mid-90s), about 2/3 of all poor families with children received benefits. Today, under TANF, their participation rate has fallen to 1/4.

The good news is that we have a wealth of experience about what works and what doesnt in public assistance. Giving money to the poor really is effective at alleviating poverty. Poverty in America is all too real. Fortunately, the cure can be too.

Refs

How Poverty is Measured:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_poverty#Measurements

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2010-en/11/02/02/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2010-89-en

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq2.htm

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/soc_glance-2011-en/06/02/index.html?contentType=/ns/Chapter,/ns/StatisticalPublication&itemId=/content/chapter/soc_glance-2011-17-en&containerItemId=/content/serial/19991290&accessItemIds=&mimeType=text/html

Data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate#Lists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty#Table_of_welfare_effect_on_poverty_reduction

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT?order=wbapi_data_value_2010+wbapi_data_value&sort=asc

Articles:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/poverty-in-america-is-mainstream/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

http://www.ets.org/newsroom/news_releases/report_warns_child_poverty

http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/Poverty-Threatens-Health-of-US-Children.aspx

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/28/early-childhood-poverty-damages-brain-development-study-finds

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/nyregion/for-poor-schoolchildren-a-poverty-of-words.html

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/13/whos-poor-in-america-50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-a-data-portrait/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130504163257.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fscience_society%2Feconomics+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Science+%26+Society+News+–+Economics%29

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/why-cant-we-end-poverty-in-america.html?pagewanted=all

Academic Research:

Click to access 07_02_03.pdf

Click to access foc262f.pdf

Head Start: the case for universal public pre-K

Harvard’s David Deming has a bombshell of a study on the long-term effects of Head Start – a program serving poor children, preparing them for entry into elementary school. Deming found that young adults – who participated in the program as young children – are in better health, less likely to be idle, more likely to have graduated high school and more likely to have attended college.

And the size of Head Start’s impact is enormous: the equivalent of 75% of the gap between poor black and white kids; or about 33% of the gap between children in poverty and children in families of median income.

For more than a decade, we’ve known that Head Start’s effects on grades peter out over the course of primary school – and critics of the program have thus far focused on test scores as they questioned the program’s efficacy. But grades are of small benefit if they dont translate into better adult outcomes – what use should we have for a program that produces A-students who are no more likely to graduate, go on to college or be gainfully employed?

Deming’s work shows Head Start to be a far better program than anyone ever imagined. In retrospect, it shouldnt be a surprise – in a nation in which more than 20% of children grow up in poverty, a program that offers food and instruction to young, resource-starved bodies and minds should indeed have powerful effects.

Child poverty in America, after all, isnt just more frequent than it is elsewhere – American poverty is deeper too. American kids in poverty are, on average, much farther below the poverty line than poor children in other rich countries.

We already know that children who grow up in poverty enter elementary school with substantial deficits – and that childhood poverty is predictive of many long-term problems, including reduced income and educational attainment, and increased crime rates.

A more recent study shows things are in fact much worse: brain scans reveal that the differences are physical. Important structures in poor children’s brains are physically smaller than those of children who werent exposed to poverty. Affected areas include those responsible for memory, emotion and speech – such differences have been linked to reduced academic performance and elevated rates of crime and other social ills.

Berating inner-city school systems has become commonplace among conservatives – but it is more and more apparent that we cannot and should not expect elementary schools to undo the effects of poverty, when it’s had years to work its harm long before children arrive to the classroom.

The success of Head Start at improving the lives of young adults hints at the size of the benefit of free, universal public pre-K. The US has become the least meritocratic country in the west – it is harder in America for a poor kid to become rich than it is anyplace else. America is wasting its most precious resource – its children – by failing to invest in them, to give them a chance to make the most of their talents.

It is not out of charity, but self-interest, that all Americans should welcome an expansion of public education to include pre-K. As America becomes more meritocratic – as we maximize the development of each individual, to become more productive members of the world economy, and also to be better citizens and neighbors – we are all made the richer for it.

Refs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start_Program

Click to access Deming_HeadStart.pdf

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=IDD#

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130504163257.htm

http://www.ets.org/newsroom/news_releases/report_warns_child_poverty

http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/Poverty-Threatens-Health-of-US-Children.aspx

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/28/early-childhood-poverty-damages-brain-development-study-finds

http://centerforeducation.rice.edu/slc/LS/30MillionWordGap.html

Minimum Wage

Raise the price of something – we all intuit – and people will want less of it. Raise the minimum wage and low-wage employment will decrease. Great theory – cryin’ shame the facts dont support it.

If you could raise the minimum wage and hold all else constant, it’s hard to imagine that employment wouldnt be adversely affected. But you cant. People working minimum wage jobs are poor. Poor people are fairly predictable in this regard: give them extra cash, and sure enough, they go and spend it. So when you increase the minimum wage, you should expect to get a commensurate bump up in consumer demand.

Tax cuts for cagillionaires, by comparison, have less predictable effects. When so-called “job-creators” get a tax break, the extra cash rarely goes into consumption. You can only drive one Maserati or sleep till noon in one ski chalet at a time. Their extra income tends to go to saving/investing – and since capital is free to cross borders in search of the best return, tax cuts for the rich are as likely to create jobs in Thailand or Mexico as anyplace else.

On the other hand, when you give a McWorker a raise, the extra cash is not likely to go into a Roth IRA. It will almost certainly be spent locally – at Walmart, the supermarket, the dentist, Jiffy Lube, etc. And guess what: the cumulative effect of raising the income of ALL minimum wage workers at the same time MORE THAN offsets the increased labor costs. Employers experience an immediate bump-up in demand, and so not only do they maintain employment levels – if anything, they add jobs. The charm of this theory is that it’s actually borne out by the facts.

Twenty years ago, this effect was only suspected – it at best constituted a minority opinion among economists. Then two yet-unknown, up-n-coming economists seized on a change in state law as a “natural experiment.” New Jersey raised its minimum wage; neighboring Pennsylvania did not. David Card and Alan Krueger looked at the border area to see if employment in the two states diverged – they found that it didnt.

With increasingly sophisticated methods, Card and Krueger and other researchers have since reproduced these same results many times over: when you increase the minimum wage, low wage workers do in fact experience an increase in income (that is, their employers dont cut their hours in response); and employment holds steady. This effect has become common knowledge among economists – not that conservatives care – their beliefs arent based in fact anyway – they’re happy hanging on to refuted, sophomoric theories – if they cant wrap their brains around evolution, what chance could they have to grasp economics?

Minimum wage is a classic case in which free markets can NOT be relied on to produce optimal results. If an individual firm chooses to increase wages, it’s not likely to experience an offsetting increase in demand – it will probably cost the firm. However if everyone increases wages at once, everyone comes out ahead: the nation’s poorest employees get a raise that costs their employers nothing. It’s a textbook case for using legislation to improve wellbeing when free markets cant do the job.

In constant dollars, today’s $7.25 minimum wage is lower than it was during the entire 30 year period 1955-85. With American poverty at its highest in decades – the highest of any rich country – and with its poorest workers increasingly unable to keep up, raising the minimum wage is sound, sensible policy at a critical time.

Refs:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/along-the-minimum-wage-battle-front/?_r=3

http://www.nber.org/papers/w4509

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5632.html

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774473.html