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Comments by YACCS

 

No hobgoblins here

John Rosenberg points out a minor discrepancy in the positions of the NAACP on two race-related issues:

In Florida the NAACP does not want the state to collect information that would identify poorly performing schools. By contrast, in California, as one of their primary arguments against Prop. 54, the Racial Privacy Initiative, the NAACP and its allies argue that the state must continue to collect racial information in order to monitor compliance with civil rights laws.

Of course, nobody who has been paying attention over the last few decades thinks the NAACP stands for any principle beyond naked self-interest any longer, but the contrast is still striking.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/30/2003 09:42:00 AM |

 

My kids are hot! Please raise my taxes!

James Lileks writes a column about a column he didn't write:

The premise concerned the closing of the wading pools in the middle of August. That's right - budget cuts, you see. They couldn't find $13K in a $60 million budget for wading pools, so they shut them on the hottest day of the year. I think, but cannot prove, that this is their way of making us scream to our legislators, to show up outside their offices carrying our limp tots, begging for tax hikes so the wee bairns can be moistened with chlorinated, pee-infused H20 through Labor Day. God forbid they'd ever let some staffers go - no, every Park Department employee is vital and crucial, right down to the guy whose job consists of visiting all the wading pools and putting up CLOSED signs.

If I didn't like Lileks so much, I'd say screw the kids - let parents go to his beloved Target and spend a few bucks on wading pools of their own. But I won't. Instead, I'll point out that he's right on the money about politicians' motivations. A friend of mine who worked for a U.S. Senator confirms that this is *exactly* how budgeting works: fully fund the invisible, unpopular, and/or silly programs, so there is less money left than there should be for the visible, popular, and/or necessary programs; then make grand pronouncements about how this latter group of programs will need to be cut unless something is done.


Politicians don't close public swimming pools in August because they hate children. Politicians close public swimming pools in August so constituents won't complain as much when their taxes go up by a few hundred dollars in January.
posted by Peter at 8/28/2003 12:12:00 PM |

 

Elections are a serious threat to democracy!

On the November ballot in New York City will be a proposal to eliminate partisan primaries. If the proposal passes, all candidates in a district will run in a single primary election, which will be open to all voters. The top two vote-getters for each office in the primary will face off in the general election. Such a system is used in many other large cities, and it sounds like a reasonable idea to me. But not to everyone:

City Democrats have vowed to fight the plan and Brian McLaughlin, head of the 1.5 million-member city Central Labor Council, said he will convene 90 union leaders tomorrow to "spearhead an effort to challenge this serious threat to democracy." McLaughlin said he has enlisted the support of some of the city's biggest unions, including District Council 37 and Local 1199, to come out in force to reject the initiative in November.

I fail to see how the proposal is a "serious threat to democracy," and I doubt McLaughlin was asked to elaborate. How anyone can get so riled up to fight the proposal is beyond me. Well, almost beyond me - obviously, anyone with an entrenched interest in the current system is going to scream. So far, that would be political party hacks and labor union leaders. Which suggests to me that the proposal would be the best thing to happen to the city since unlimited ride MetroCards were introduced.

But what is the chance it will actually succeed at the polls? I predict slim to nil. Gotta hand it to the party hacks and union leaders - when they scream, people listen.
posted by Peter at 8/27/2003 09:31:00 AM |

 

Who said it first?

With regard to the Fox lawsuit against Al Franken, I've heard several pundits comment about the general absurdity of being allowed to trademark a common phrase like "fair and balanced." So here's a question: is the phrase "fair and balanced" really a common phrase, or do we just think it's common because of Fox? Were people regularly using the phrase before Fox adopted it?
posted by David Nieporent at 8/26/2003 03:05:00 AM |

 

Moore religion

According to Eugene Volokh, Hindus are gay! Well, it makes sense if you read the whole post.


And on the subject of the intersection of religion and government, this excerpt of aletter published in the New York Times about the Roy Moore ten commandments controversy:

The duty of a judge is not to obey God but to follow the law, which he took an oath to uphold. If Chief Justice Moore finds that his duties as a judge conflict with his religious beliefs, he can resolve the conflict in favor of his higher calling by resigning from his secular responsibilities.

But he has no business being a judge if he is willing to subjugate the law to his own personal convictions, regardless of how deeply those convictions are held.

In other words, Moore can believe what he wants, but he can't act on those beliefs as a judge; he has to follow the law. That, indeed, seems to be the conventional wisdom amongst liberals about Moore.

Which is fine, except that I recall someone not on the left saying the exact same thing about judges like Moore, and taking flak for it. Last year, Justice Scalia gave a speech, and then published an article, saying that judges, whatever their personal moral or religious views, had to follow the law with regard to capital punishment:

I pause here to emphasize the point that in my view the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course if he feels strongly enough he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty—and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do.

Scalia was accused of injecting religious views into jurisprudence, and there was great uproar on the left. But all he was saying is what people are saying now about Moore: if he can't obey the law, he's not fit to be a judge, and he should step down.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/26/2003 02:49:00 AM |

 

Still, more successful than the Devil Rays.

A couple of years ago, Tampa famously rolled out surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology at the Super Bowl. They've finally, tacitly, admitted failure:

Two years after Tampa became the nation's first city to use facial-recognition software to search for wanted criminals, officials are dropping the program.

It led to zero arrests.

Perhaps if they had focused the cameras on the state legislature?

In any case, I say that they "tacitly" admitted it, because they didn't really admit it at all:

Durkin emphasized Tuesday that the trial run with Face-It didn't cost the city any money. But even so, he said, its use likely benefited the city.

"Something that's intangible is how many wanted persons avoided (Ybor City) because the cameras were there," he said. "That's something we may never calculate."

And the best part of not calculating it is that the city is free to pretend that it provided a benefit, without fear of contradiction. Except, if it "likely benefited the city," then why are they giving it up?

I shouldn't complain overly; it's good to see that government officials are willing to experiment with new approaches, and it's also good to see that they're willing to abandon those experiments if they prove to be failures. We should count our blessings that this didn't go the way of the typical failed government program, as seems to be happening in nearby Pinellas County:

Meanwhile, facial-recognition technology has been in use at the airport, jail and jail visitation center in Pinellas County for more than a year, and at the courthouse since late April. And Pinellas sheriff's officials have no plans to discard it, although they have not attributed any arrests to the technology.

Pinellas sheriff's Lt. James Main, who heads the program for Sheriff Everett Rice, said Rice's office is confident the technology works well and is a useful security tool, despite the lack of arrests.

"We don't have any plans to change anything here," Main said. "The fact that we aren't making arrests doesn't mean the technology isn't working."

He said Tampa's use of the technology is far different than in Pinellas. In Tampa, the technology isn't used in a controlled environment like the inside of a well-lighted courthouse, where people can be asked to take off hats and glasses.

Hmm. With that stubborn denial of reality, anybody want to bet that there's a federal grant somewhere out there which is paying for Pinellas' use of the technology?
posted by David Nieporent at 8/22/2003 11:13:00 PM |

 

Conservatives are evil

Yesterday the New York Times came up with yet another of those well-some-Republicans-are-okay-but-these-extremists-in-Washington-now-are-modern-day-Torquemadas editorials they're so famous for. This time, it didn't come from Paul Krugman, but from editorial board member Adam Cohen, who is allegedly an attorney. (I say "allegedly" for reasons that will be made clear.)

He describes the National Constitution Center, a new museum in Philadelphia devoted to (you guessed it) the Constitution, as a wonderful, inspiring place that tells "a largely triumphal story of rights recognized and new groups woven into the fabric of the nation." You can practically hear the trumpets in the background. But now (cue ominous music) George Bush and his evil comrades want to change all that, taking away the right to vote from women and re-enslaving blacks. Or something like that; Cohen doesn't come out and say precisely that, but he implies it as strongly as possible without doing so. But holding out the spectres of Dred Scott and the Chinese Exclusion Act is just the beginning for Cohen; he then goes on to slander specific nominees of Bush's:

One Bush choice for the courts, Michael McConnell, now a federal appeals court judge, has argued that the Supreme Court was wrong to rule that the equal protection clause required legislative districts with roughly equal numbers of people.

Here's why I question Cohen's credentials as a lawyer: he can't tell the difference between an argument about what the law is and an argument about what the law ought to be. It's one of the first things one learns in law school, but Cohen has problems with it. It's possible that Michael McConnell is secretly a Klansman, dreaming up ways to keep blacks down. But that has nothing to do with the discussion; McConnell makes a scholarly argument that the Supreme Court misinterpreted a law. Does Cohen not know that, or does he not care?

Jay Bybee, also now an appeals court judge, has argued, incredibly, that the 17th Amendment should be repealed, and United States senators once again selected by state legislators.

And? What's so "incredible" about that? It may be a good idea; it may be a bad idea. But why is Cohen so horrified by it? Cohen doesn't say. He provides no context for Bybee's statement, nor does he let anybody know why this particular amendment is so important in the arena of civil rights, which was the framework for Cohen's discussion. People for the American Way, in their denunciation of Bybee, argues that it's "anti-democratic" and "turning back the clock on representative government" to repeal the 17th. But (a) given that state legislatures are democratically elected, it is in fact neither of those things, and (b) given that the whole Bill of Rights which PFAW and Cohen celebrate is anti-democratic, that's not a very compelling criticism standing alone.

William Pryor, a nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, urged Congress to repeal an important part of the Voting Rights Act.

He urged Congress to repeal a provision of the Voting Rights Act, Section 5, which requires Justice Department preclearance before certain portions of certain states make even trivial changes in voting procedures. Since the Justice Department rarely objects to these changes, there's little purpose to the law. Repealing it wouldn't change the substantive rights of anybody; it would just streamline bureaucratic procedures. Cohen demagogues this to make it sound as if Pryor is trying to repeal voting rights for blacks -- but again, is vague enough that most readers won't know the difference.

President Bush has said he wants to appoint judges like Clarence Thomas and Justice Scalia, both embarked on campaigns to undo years of constitutional progress.

Not all change, of course, is progress, and in any case, Cohen provides no evidence for this assertion. "Judges like Clarence Thomas and Justice Scalia" want to change the way judges work; Cohen again either can't discern, or refuses to acknowledge, the difference between statements about what the law should be and statements about what the law are.

Justice Scalia advocates tying Americans' rights today to the prevailing wisdom of the 18th century. In a petulant dissent in the recent sodomy decision, he argued that gay sex can be criminalized now because it was a crime in the 13 original states.

Actually, Justice Scalia advocates tying Americans' rights today to two things: the Constitution, and the prevailing wisdom of the 21st century. He argues that judges ought to apply the Constitution rather than their personal views, and, on issues where the Constitution is silent, that democratically elected legislatures ought to decide. He argues that gay sex isn't forbidden by the Constitution for the simple reason that nothing in the Constitution addresses the issue; he argues that it can be criminalized now because the "prevailing wisdom" in Texas now says so.

Justice Thomas offered the dangerous argument in last year's school voucher case that states should be less bound by the Bill of Rights than the federal government.

A flat out lie. That one seemed bizarre, so I checked it out. Thomas argued, in the school voucher case, that the states should be less bound by the establishment clause than the federal government. Here's what he actually wrote:

Consequently, in the context of the Establishment Clause, it may well be that state action should be evaluated on different terms than similar action by the Federal Government. "States, while bound to observe strict neutrality, should be freer to experiment with involvement [in religion]--on a neutral basis--than the Federal Government." Walz v. Tax Comm'n of City of New York, 397 U. S. 664, 699 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring). Thus, while the Federal Government may "make no law respecting an establishment of religion," the States may pass laws that include or touch on religious matters so long as these laws do not impede free exercise rights or any other individual religious liberty interest. By considering the particular religious liberty right alleged to be invaded by a State, federal courts can strike a proper balance between the demands of the Fourteenth Amendment on the one hand and the federalism prerogatives of States on the other.

Not only does Thomas not make a claim about the "Bill of Rights," but he doesn't make the claim that states can establish a religion or discriminate on the basis of religion. Again, Cohen tries to turn a legal argument about the interpretation of a particular amendment into a claim that a conservative judge wants to revive lynchings.

Reasonable people can disagree on some of these issues of legal interpretation, but Cohen doesn't even try. He just race-baits in the hopes that nobody will notice the paucity of logic, facts, or fairness in his column. When Republicans attempted, unconvincingly, to claim that Democratic opposition to Bill Pryor was based on anti-Catholic bias, the New York Times had a tantrum. And yet the Times' editorial writer has no problem insinuating that George Bush and his gang -- including the black Clarence Thomas -- want to take away basic rights from blacks and women.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/20/2003 07:29:00 PM |

 

Didn't families of suicide bombers get $15,000 also?

From the killing-the-golden-goose department: Blair Hornstine, the girl who successfully manipulated the system to become valedictorian and gain admission to Harvard, and then tried to gild the lily (perhaps it's actually the mixed-metaphor department) by suing her school district for millions of dollars, has settled for a mere $15,000. (Her attorneys also get $45,000, lucky them.)

So, let's tote up the scorecard:

• Without the suit: Hornstine would have had the title of co-valedictorian, admission to Harvard, a good reputation in her circles and anonymity outside it.
  
• With the suit: Hornstine got the title of valedictorian, the tag of plagiarist, and national notoriety as a spoiled brat. And couldn't attend her own graduation because of the fear of being booed off the stage. And $15,000, which won't even pay for a year of Harvard -- a moot point, since she lost her admission to Harvard.

It doesn't sound like a very good tradeoff to me. But it does sound like poetic justice. It's one thing to "work the system" to one's advantage. Fine, she invented a phony illness and used it as an excuse to fix her class schedule so she couldn't lose. That seems like crossing the line from working the system to cheating, but she did it, and the school district let her get away with it. But when you've twisted and bent the rules that much, and successfully reached your goal, give thanks for your good fortune and move on. Don't press your luck and try to milk it for a big cash windfall for no other reason than that you think you can get away with it. But she tried, and failed, and now she's got a big pile of nothing. And that's exactly what she deserves.

(What's known but doesn't get enough attention in all this is that the school district wasn't trying to take her valedictorian status away from her. I've heard several radio talk show hosts make that claim. Her whole lawsuit was motivated by the fact that someone else was also going to be honored. How much of a jerk do you have to be to try to keep someone else from getting what is, ultimately, a pretty trivial honor? Sure, it's an accomplishment, but she was already in college, and it's not as if, years down the road, anybody would have cared whether she was a high school valedictorian or "mere" high school co-valedictorian.)

Ah, well. Knowing the way the world works, she'll probably be defrauding investors of her own company someday.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/20/2003 05:33:00 PM |

 

Only the true Messiah would deny his divinity... or something like that...

American religion is becoming more "mystical" and less "mainline" says New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. The Roman Catholic holiday of the Feast of the Assumption this past week is his Exhibit A. Fine. Let him believe or not. What I was most struck by in the column was this passage:

Yet despite the lack of scientific or historical evidence, and despite the doubts of Biblical scholars, America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians.

First off, the Virgin Birth isn't meant to be a matter of scientific or historical evidence. For that matter, it's not clear whether such an event *could* be proved by any such evidence. Secondly, one can probably find Biblical scholars who doubt the existence of God. If all Biblical scholars agreed on everything, all Christians would still be Catholic (well, not exactly - you'd still have Biblical non-scholars around - but you get my point).


But it's the claim that 47 percent of non-Christians believe in the Virgin Birth that is most striking. How was this poll taken? Who are these people? You can certainly believe that Jesus was born, was crucified, and had lots of followers without being a Christian. But the Virgin Birth is an event that presumably marks Jesus as, well, somehow special. Perhaps 47 percent of non-Christians didn't fully understand the question? I'd be interested to know how many of them believe in the Immaculate Conception and Transubstantiation as well.
posted by Peter at 8/19/2003 11:20:00 AM |

 

Future urban legend?

The New York Times points out a budding myth: despite what people are saying, it wasn't fifty million people who lost power in the recent blackout.

The number 50 million appeared as part of a news release issued late Thursday and again on Friday by the reliability council, which sets rules for managing the electrical grid.

"Approximately 61,800 megawatts of customer load was lost in an area that covers 50 million people," the statement said. "We cannot say with precision how many customers were affected at this time."

The statement did not say 50 million people lost power — indeed, it made clear that the total was unknown. But that number was widely reported as the sum of those plunged into darkness.

It calls to mind the "Super Bowl Sunday" domestic violence myth. A "fact" is reported once, and is repeated over and over again, by reporters whose goal is sensationalism, and whose idea of research is cutting and pasting from older stories. Good to see the Times, for once, not falling into this trap.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/17/2003 07:41:00 PM |

 

Now I know my ABCs

Perhaps I'm just missing something really obvious, but I can't quite figure out the point of the California alphabet lottery. If they're going to rotate the alphabet from district to district in order to be fair, well, that part makes sense. Different people will be at the top of the ballot in different districts, so nobody gains the advantage of being first all the time.

But if they're going to do that, then why do they need to pick a random alphabet? What exactly does that do for them? Ultimately, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ is no more or less random than RWQOJMVAHBSGZXNTCIEKUPDYFL. The former, of course, is more familiar, so it seems more "ordered," but it's no more or less arbitrary than the latter, and hence no more or less fair.

Or am I missing something really obvious?
posted by David Nieporent at 8/14/2003 01:41:00 AM |

 

When bad things happen to bad people

Also known as getting what you deserve.

(Yeah, I know: she meant well. Big whoop.)
posted by David Nieporent at 8/11/2003 05:07:00 PM |

 

Advertisements for vouchers

Fun with unions... a New York City junior high teacher was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana. Did I say teacher? I meant "dean of discipline." He pled guilty to a felony. The Department of Education fired him. Well, they tried, anyway. But he entered a "drug treatment program," and so an arbitrator has now ruled that he should be allowed to keep his job.

The arbitrator's "logic," and I use the term loosely, was that since completion of the diversion program would leave the teacher without a criminal record, the Education Department couldn't fire him. Ain't tenure grand?

But I'm sure the real problem with public schools is that not enough money is being thrown at them. And vouchers can't possibly help, because, after all, private schools don't have the same highly-qualified teachers the public schools do.


(Incidentally, none of my comments should be read as an endorsement of the drug war. The whole fiasco just points out the idiocy of the whole situation. First we pretend that possession of a recreational substance causes harm. Then we pretend that we can "treat" people who are carrying these substances around, as if they had pneumonia, when what we're really doing is making politicians look compassionate while keeping jails from filling up too fast. Then we pretend that this "treatment" erases the harm supposedly caused by the offense itself. And at the end of the process, we've spent thousands of tax dollars for no clear reason, and have accomplished nothing. But all that aside, it hardly sends the right message to students to tell them that the person in charge of enforcing the rules against them doesn't have to obey the rules himself.)
posted by David Nieporent at 8/11/2003 05:23:00 AM |

 

Panda Republicanism

Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post is moving to New York City:

Whatever else can be said about Rudy Giuliani, he gave New York City a different profile in the 1990s, and now people who would never even have dared to visit Manhattan flock there to live. But this is the point: In fact, what makes me nervous about Manhattan nowadays is not the criminals, who have faded back into the Bronx, but the people who replaced them: clever people, accomplished people, well-educated people -- and people who agree about almost everything.

She's right, and I find it just about the most infuriating thing about living in the city. Thanks to Dr. Manhattan for pointing the article out. I agree completely with his comments:

I think just about every conservative in the greater NYC area can relate to what I used to call the "Giant Panda" reaction: when a group of people, having just become aware of the exotic species in their midst, react with the strange mixture of curiosity and condescension: "I've heard such species exist, but I never expected to actually meet one!" Then there's the "Misplaced Compliment" variation, where the reaction is a stammering "But..but you're nice and smart ... you don't seem like a fascist!"

Indeed. One other reaction I get when they do find out my party affiliation is "well, you're just a *fiscal* conservative, right?" I've been asked that multiple times. It's a rough enough description of my beliefs that I usually just agree. Friends (as well as people I've just met) are somewhat comforted to know that while I may be all for lowering taxes, I'm not in favor of hunting gay people for sport.

posted by Peter at 8/08/2003 05:08:00 PM |

 

When is a door not a door? When it's ajar!

What do you call it when the government imposes costs on you, which you must pay, by law, whether you get something for it or not? Well, if you figure it out, please let the New York Times know, okay? Writing about the BBC:

Indeed, the corporation is governed by a 10-year Royal Charter, not expiring until 2006, meaning it can take a much longer view of its investments and spending than other broadcasters. At the same time, though, to the annoyance of competitors, the charter permits it to sell programs, books and magazines even as it harvests income from the compulsory license fees that its critics call a tax.

(Emphasis added.) What do other people call it, a penguin?
posted by David Nieporent at 8/01/2003 11:09:00 PM |