Can you tolerate NAMBLA?

image courtesty of the Federal Art Project, via Wikimedia Commons You think you're open-minded? What if the North American Man-Boy Love Association wanted to distribute a newsletter in your town? What if they wanted to hold a local parade celebrating pederasty? I am currently studying social psychology in graduate school, and I'm particularly interested in political psychology. One of my present research interests is political tolerance. "Political tolerance" refers to individuals' willingness to extend equal civil liberties to unpopular groups. When political scientists and psychologists measure political tolerance, they often probe individuals for their ability to withstand the most offensive, outlandish groups and speech possible. For example, a liberal-minded person may be asked whether they would be willing to allow a rally for the Klu Klux Klan or some extremist, militaristic group. Paradoxically, a truly tolerant person must be willing to allow racially intolerant speech. Political tolerance plays a cornerstone role in functioning democracies (at least, we think so). If voters can strip away the civil liberties of disliked political groups, those liberties lay on precarious ground indeed. If we cannot tolerate the words of anarchists or members of the Westboro Baptist Church, then we do not really believe in the boundlessness of speech at all. Academics say as much. In reality, voters are not so tolerant.

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Against all odds: How marijuana was legalized in Denver

If your quest were to convince the people of your city to legalize a highly demonized drug which was entirely safe, how would you run your campaign? At the recently concluded True Spin Conference in Denver, I had the opportunity to listen to an animated yet highly focused Mason Tvert describing for the audience how he and his small and not-well-funded organization (“SAFER”) convinced the people of Denver to legalize marijuana in 2005, with 51% of the people voting in favor. He also spearheaded a 2006 campaign to legalize marijuana throughout Colorado. Although that latter measure failed, an astounding 41% of the people of Colorado voted in favor. In case you’re thinking that I’m promoting the use of marijuana, I am not, but neither would I attempt to prohibit any other adult from using it. I’ve never used marijuana (even though I once worked as a musician and the opportunities were ubiquitous. Millions of gainfully employed and otherwise law abiding people do like to use marijuana, but they are paying dearly for their attempts to feel good and seek stress relief. I am for the legalization of marijuana because that our country arrests more than 750,000 people each year for possessing or using an extremely safe drug that successfully makes people feel good. This destructive and expensive waste of government law enforcement is absolutely shameful. The number of people arrested each year is more than the entire population of South Dakota. and these users include many people you know and respect. There is rank hypocrisy in the air, given that marijuana inexpensively offers the harmless escape that most of us seek much of the time (in one way or another), without any serious side effects and without the expense of many other methods of escape. If there were no such thing as marijuana, when it was finally invented by a pharmaceutical company, we would hail it as a miracle drug (Big Pharma wouldn’t need to lie about its efficacy or safety, as it does for many other drugs). Governments would allow it to be sold at drugs stores and they would happily tax it.

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What makes a great teacher?

The Atlantic asks what makes a great school teach, and gets some fascinating answers from Teach For America:

First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: “They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.” Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing. Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.
Are great teachers flashy? Not necessarily. Teach America is:
not very interested in the things I noticed most: charisma, ambitious lesson objectives, extroversion. What matters more, at least according to Teach for America’s research, is less flashy: Were you prepared? Did you achieve your objective in five minutes?
This article points out that having a good teacher really matters. Great teachers work hard at teaching and they get good results, regardless of their circumstances; they don't blame poverty and family dysfunction, even where those things do exist.

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An Alternate Look At The Way Things Did Not Go

Alternate history is a subset of science fiction. Stories and novels of this sort have been written for a long time, but in the last three decades or so the form has come into its own. Many of them are playful What-Ifs that look at how things might have gone had a detail or two gone differently. They are then excuses for adventure or thriller plots that quite often have little real poignance, not least because often the point of departure for the changed history is quite unlikely.

The best ones, however, play with changes that actually might have happened given just a nudge in one direction or the other, and the unfolding drama gives a glimpse of worlds that could easily have come about, often forbidding, thoroughly cautionary. We tend to assume, unconsciously at least, that things work out for the best, even when there is evidence to the contrary. An understandable approach to life given the limit power any of possess to effect events, change the course of history, or otherwise fight perceived inevitabilities. But unlike in fiction, it is rarely up to one person to fight evil or correct wrongs. It is a communal responsibility and the only tool we possess collectively is the wisdom accrued over time from which we might draw clues what to do.

Word War II provides a wellspring of speculation on what might have been done differently if. It seems occasionally that the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Seen purely from a military standpoint, perhaps so. For all its formidable abilities, Nazi Germany was ultimately limited by available resources, something certain generals tried to address on multiple occasions but ultimately failed to successfully repair. But politically? The world at the time offered faint comfort to those who thought the democracies could win in a toe-to-toe fight with the tyrants.

Allow me, then, to recommend a trilogy of novels that represent the better aspects of alternate history and effectively restore the chilling uncertainties of those times.

[more . . . ]

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The nebulous nuts and bolts of health care reform

How is that "health care reform coming? New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a savvy businessman with a long and successful career, is skeptical regarding the pending health care reform bills. This is what he had to say on Meet the Press today:

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: You know, if you really want to object to something in this bill, number one, I have asked congressperson after congressperson, not one can explain to me what's in the bill, even in the House version. Certainly not in the other version. And so for them to vote on a bill that they don't understand whatsoever, really, you got to question how--what kind of government we have. Number two, when they talk about bending the curve, as, as the governor said, bending the curve is a flimflam euphemism for increasing costs, but we're going to say we'll do it at slightly lower rate than we would have otherwise.

GOV. PATRICK: That's not what I'm talking about.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: I understand that. But they are not talking about reducing costs, they're talking about chancing the first derivative.

MR. GREGORY: Slowing it, right.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Slowing the growth down. And when you look at where the cost savings are going to be, well, they're going to cut something out of Medicare and Medicaid. Now, anybody that runs for office will tell you, you don't do that.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: I mean, the bottom line is it's so politically explosive, it really would be a first time in the history of the world if they ever cut anything out of either of those two programs.

I suspect that based upon the utter inability of any credible knowledgeable person to frankly state the cost of "health care reform," that Americans are in for a rude awakening. Consider the starting point: the terrible financial condition of Medicare. Here's how bad it is:

The present value of unfunded obligations under all parts of Medicare during FY 2007 over a 75-year forecast horizon is approximately $34.0 trillion. In other words, this amount would have to be set aside today such that the principal and interest would cover the shortfall over the next 75 years.

No private non--criminal corporation would submit operating budget this insane. Yet this is the type of program that we have come to expect from Congress, and it is based upon scores of accounting tricks. These sorts of tricks and traps are exactly what has been alleged about the current proposals for "health care reform." Consider the arguments articulated in the November 13, 2009 issue of Reason.

Congress is using "every budget gimmick in the book" to conceal hundreds of billions in healthcare-reform costs that will lead to "massive tax increases" and higher insurance premiums, one of the country's leading healthcare experts warns.

Early on, Obama originally pledged that his plan would save the typical American family $2,500 a year in healthcare costs. The main purpose of health care reform was "cost control." (see Obama's State of the Union Address from February 2009). Where is this cost control in the current bills? How can we possibly cover tens of millions of people who can't otherwise afford coverage, yet save lots of money for those who are paying their way? Both of the current proposals both depend on a government-funded free-market program administered by for-profit insurance companies. Paul Krugman has argued, however, that the free market doesn't work regarding health care.

[Y]ou don’t know when or whether you’ll need care — but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor’s office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket. This tells you right away that health care can’t be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can’t just trust insurance companies either — they’re not in business for their health, or yours.

The second thing about health care is that it’s complicated, and you can’t rely on experience or comparison shopping.. . .

We are a country filled with people who abuse their bodies and then depend upon the health care system's expensive treatment. The annual cost of obesity alone in the U.S. is $200 Billion. In fact, we spend less than one percent of total health care spending on prevention. Where is the "stick" (or the "carrot") in the current proposals that will actually make obese, chain-smoking and otherwise reckless Americans change their wasteful and destructive ways? These are my concerns about the current proposals. Well, those concerns and these and these and these . And now we have the business-savvy mayor of NY stating that he has yet to find a member of Congress who understands how the current proposals would really work. And we have a Congress with a history of not actually dealing with fiscal catastrophe, but only putting it off for a few years. We have a system that has yet to explain how it will force Americans to live healthier life styles, in order to save that money. We have competing 2,000 page proposals loaded with lots of stuff that will only be revealed AFTER "reform" is passed. I can already hear it: "We didn't catch that obscure language inserted by [financially interested corporation] that will cost taxpayers an additional $40 Billion every year"). What sustains the momentum is that we will purportedly be insuring thirty million more people, even though it is not clear what we will be giving up in order to do that. Things that motivate the idea of "health care reform" are some low-hanging fruit such portability and restrictions on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. I've advocated that we should pass laws regarding these obviously needed measures separately, so that we can then really look carefully at the rest of the proposal separately, to just it on its own merits, if we can cut through the morass of accounting gymnastics that apparently serve as the backbone of most of the package. Another thing that motivates passing "health care reform" is the name of the legislation itself. Who could possibly be against "health care reform." A good title does wonders for ramming through indecipherable legislation. This is the current health care "reform," as best I can discern it. It's not looking promising, because it's not looking financially sustainable.

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