If you're interested in hearing Nacole sing in a pro-Obama video, doing an election version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", check out the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBSW1WuoJTA
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Election '08 by Gus, Part 12: My endorsements
Here are my endorsements for the CA general election on 11/4:
National:
President: Barack Obama
Thoughtful, intellectually curious, intelligent, compassionate, and potentially transformational. In short, what we need more of in our leadership at all levels.
State:
Proposition 1, High Speed Rail Bonds: YES
SF to LA in 2.5 hrs at $50 a person? Sign me up. That shit can't happen quickly enough.
Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals: NO
Redundant- CA law already protects animal welfare and safety. Enforce the existing regulations as the supply side strategy. The rest of it can be handled by demand side consumer preferences (i.e., buying cage-free eggs, etc.)
Proposition 3, Children's Hospital Bond Act: NO
Redundant- only $400M of the $750M that was authorized in Proposition 61 in November 2004 has been awarded. Spend the other $350M you already have, and once that's spent, if there's really an argument for more I'll be happy to consider it.
Proposition 4, Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy: NO
Raise your kids well, and they won't get pregnant as minors, thus obviating the need for this law.
Failing that, raise your kids semi-competently, and they'll involve you in the decision-making, thus obviating the need for this law.
Or, just raise your kids like you don't know what the hell you're doing. Sorry, but I don't feel like changing the legal code to bail you out of the consequences of your incompetent parenting.
Proposition 5, Nonviolent Drug Offenses: YES
Drug use is primarily a public health problem, not a law enforcement problem. I have no problem throwing violent drug cartel members in jail, but your average idiot walking around with a little bag of weed is hardly a major threat to society.
Proposition 6, Police and Law Enforcement Funding: NO
After Proposition 8, which I will get to shortly, this one is the most offensive to me. It isn't even the usual shitty proposition that increases already stiff sentencing rules in a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts:
Politician 1: I think we should have mandatory sentences for all people convicted of jaywalking of 100 years in prison, after which time their rotting corpses will be pissed on, then cremated, and then the ashes locked up for the next 10,000 years in the Yucca Mountain facility with all the leaking nuclear waste.
Politician 2: I don't know, I kind of think our current policy of 25 years in prison, including daily raging anal fistula, is sufficient.
Politician 1: WHAT? How DARE you insult decent, hardworking folks. SOFT ON CRIME! SOFT ON CRIME! Why do you love criminals and hate America???
Politician 2: NO! NO! I'm NOT soft on crime!! I... I... I think we should take the jaywalkers, and put them, still alive, in barrels full of spent nuclear fuel and put them in Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years!
And that, friends, is how sentencing laws are developed in this country. But this proposition isn't even really that. No, it's an attempt to legislate that a fixed amount of the general budget gets spent on law enforcement. Screw budget negotiations! Screw schools! Screw all the other stuff that needs money! Yes, we'll make a naked grab for dollars, but embed it WITHIN a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts.
Crap. Crap crap crap. Seriously, who writes this shit?
Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Generation: NO
Another favorite strategy of mine- naming your proposition the opposite of what it actually does.
This one creates thresholds for renewable energy sourcing, but establishes a minimum power requirement for getting a permit at 30 megawatts, which is more than what 60% of renewable energy providers can produce (since most renewable energy providers are pretty small). That will wipe out a hefty fraction of the renewable power suppliers. Also, the permitting authority is transferred from local government, where it currently resides, to the state Energy Commission. Then, the measure raises the targets for renewable sourcing, while simultaneously removing the provision that requires utilities that fail to meet the target in a given year to make up for that loss by procuring additional renewable energy in later years.
In short, wipe out a new industry of small providers so that the large energy suppliers of old can get around someday to providing what the smaller providers already do. Oh, and we'll make sure there's no real penalty for failing to get around to doing it.
Proposition 8, Amending the State Constitution to Eliminate the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry: NO
I regret that I have but one vote to cast against this stinking piece of bigoted, pseudo-legislative crap.
Seriously, people, this is the 21st fucking century. What I love about America is that if you want to hate gay people, you're totally welcome to do within the confines of your own exceedingly small mind. In fact, you're even free to shout out your bigotry from the very rooftops. And I would go to the mat to protect your right to do so.
But do not touch the Constitution. Keep your angry, close-minded, bigoted hands off.
Proposition 9, Constitutional Amendment of Victims' Rights, Parole for Criminals, etc.: NO
This one is like a hybrid of Props 6 and 8: a constitutional amendment to enshrine forever a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts. I have nothing new to add- this thing is crap.
Proposition 10, Alternative Fuel Vehicles Bonds: NO
I went back and forth on this one a little. It appears to be a move to get more trucks on natural gas, which is supplied by a company that is owned by the author of the proposition.
Thing is, the U.S. has a reasonable amount of natural gas. It doesn't have a lot of oil. So although it wouldn't necessarily help much on the renewable fuels front, I was willing to entertain the idea just on the basis of being able to rely more on domestic energy production.
That said, this proposition boils down to borrowing $10B to hand out $50K subsidies per truck to anyone willing to trade their crappy gasoline-powered truck for a slightly less crappy natural gas truck. In the end, I think the marginal benefit of this scheme is less than the marginal cost.
Proposition 11, Redistricting Constitutional Amendment: YES
Much as I hate constitutional amendments, the current system is definitely rigged for incumbents, so having a defined process that incumbent legislators don't have direct control over sounds like a nice try. If it doesn't work, another state can figure out a better way.
Proposition 12, Veterans' Bonds: YES
This appears to be a straightforward continuance of a reasonably well-run, reasonably low-impact program fiscally.
Get out and vote on Tuesday, folks!
National:
President: Barack Obama
Thoughtful, intellectually curious, intelligent, compassionate, and potentially transformational. In short, what we need more of in our leadership at all levels.
State:
Proposition 1, High Speed Rail Bonds: YES
SF to LA in 2.5 hrs at $50 a person? Sign me up. That shit can't happen quickly enough.
Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals: NO
Redundant- CA law already protects animal welfare and safety. Enforce the existing regulations as the supply side strategy. The rest of it can be handled by demand side consumer preferences (i.e., buying cage-free eggs, etc.)
Proposition 3, Children's Hospital Bond Act: NO
Redundant- only $400M of the $750M that was authorized in Proposition 61 in November 2004 has been awarded. Spend the other $350M you already have, and once that's spent, if there's really an argument for more I'll be happy to consider it.
Proposition 4, Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy: NO
Raise your kids well, and they won't get pregnant as minors, thus obviating the need for this law.
Failing that, raise your kids semi-competently, and they'll involve you in the decision-making, thus obviating the need for this law.
Or, just raise your kids like you don't know what the hell you're doing. Sorry, but I don't feel like changing the legal code to bail you out of the consequences of your incompetent parenting.
Proposition 5, Nonviolent Drug Offenses: YES
Drug use is primarily a public health problem, not a law enforcement problem. I have no problem throwing violent drug cartel members in jail, but your average idiot walking around with a little bag of weed is hardly a major threat to society.
Proposition 6, Police and Law Enforcement Funding: NO
After Proposition 8, which I will get to shortly, this one is the most offensive to me. It isn't even the usual shitty proposition that increases already stiff sentencing rules in a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts:
Politician 1: I think we should have mandatory sentences for all people convicted of jaywalking of 100 years in prison, after which time their rotting corpses will be pissed on, then cremated, and then the ashes locked up for the next 10,000 years in the Yucca Mountain facility with all the leaking nuclear waste.
Politician 2: I don't know, I kind of think our current policy of 25 years in prison, including daily raging anal fistula, is sufficient.
Politician 1: WHAT? How DARE you insult decent, hardworking folks. SOFT ON CRIME! SOFT ON CRIME! Why do you love criminals and hate America???
Politician 2: NO! NO! I'm NOT soft on crime!! I... I... I think we should take the jaywalkers, and put them, still alive, in barrels full of spent nuclear fuel and put them in Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years!
And that, friends, is how sentencing laws are developed in this country. But this proposition isn't even really that. No, it's an attempt to legislate that a fixed amount of the general budget gets spent on law enforcement. Screw budget negotiations! Screw schools! Screw all the other stuff that needs money! Yes, we'll make a naked grab for dollars, but embed it WITHIN a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts.
Crap. Crap crap crap. Seriously, who writes this shit?
Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Generation: NO
Another favorite strategy of mine- naming your proposition the opposite of what it actually does.
This one creates thresholds for renewable energy sourcing, but establishes a minimum power requirement for getting a permit at 30 megawatts, which is more than what 60% of renewable energy providers can produce (since most renewable energy providers are pretty small). That will wipe out a hefty fraction of the renewable power suppliers. Also, the permitting authority is transferred from local government, where it currently resides, to the state Energy Commission. Then, the measure raises the targets for renewable sourcing, while simultaneously removing the provision that requires utilities that fail to meet the target in a given year to make up for that loss by procuring additional renewable energy in later years.
In short, wipe out a new industry of small providers so that the large energy suppliers of old can get around someday to providing what the smaller providers already do. Oh, and we'll make sure there's no real penalty for failing to get around to doing it.
Proposition 8, Amending the State Constitution to Eliminate the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry: NO
I regret that I have but one vote to cast against this stinking piece of bigoted, pseudo-legislative crap.
Seriously, people, this is the 21st fucking century. What I love about America is that if you want to hate gay people, you're totally welcome to do within the confines of your own exceedingly small mind. In fact, you're even free to shout out your bigotry from the very rooftops. And I would go to the mat to protect your right to do so.
But do not touch the Constitution. Keep your angry, close-minded, bigoted hands off.
Proposition 9, Constitutional Amendment of Victims' Rights, Parole for Criminals, etc.: NO
This one is like a hybrid of Props 6 and 8: a constitutional amendment to enshrine forever a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts. I have nothing new to add- this thing is crap.
Proposition 10, Alternative Fuel Vehicles Bonds: NO
I went back and forth on this one a little. It appears to be a move to get more trucks on natural gas, which is supplied by a company that is owned by the author of the proposition.
Thing is, the U.S. has a reasonable amount of natural gas. It doesn't have a lot of oil. So although it wouldn't necessarily help much on the renewable fuels front, I was willing to entertain the idea just on the basis of being able to rely more on domestic energy production.
That said, this proposition boils down to borrowing $10B to hand out $50K subsidies per truck to anyone willing to trade their crappy gasoline-powered truck for a slightly less crappy natural gas truck. In the end, I think the marginal benefit of this scheme is less than the marginal cost.
Proposition 11, Redistricting Constitutional Amendment: YES
Much as I hate constitutional amendments, the current system is definitely rigged for incumbents, so having a defined process that incumbent legislators don't have direct control over sounds like a nice try. If it doesn't work, another state can figure out a better way.
Proposition 12, Veterans' Bonds: YES
This appears to be a straightforward continuance of a reasonably well-run, reasonably low-impact program fiscally.
Get out and vote on Tuesday, folks!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Election '08 by Gus, Part 11
Watching the 2008 presidential election is feeling for me a lot like watching the 2008 Cardinals playing the Pirates, up by 9 runs going into the 7th inning. The team I'm rooting for is playing a team that's obviously weaker, and has fallen behind by a huge margin late in the game. In theory, all that should happen is that the game plays itself out and my team wins handily.
Thing is, the 2008 Cardinals proceeded to collapse in that game, surrendering 10 runs over the last 3 innings to find their way to an improbable loss.
So the question that keeps me up at nights is: are the 2008 Democrats like the 2008 Cardinals? It's a legitimate worry, because both the 2004 and the 2000 Dems were.
I figure that Obama needs a 7-9 point edge going into the election because 3 points will disappear due to the Bradley effect, as some people at the end decide that they just can't handle voting for a black man, and then another 3 points will disappear due to voter intimidation and improper elimination of voters from the rolls, as part of the typical Republican suppress-the-vote strategy.
On a different note, it's been sad to watch John McCain become so many of the things he previously has denounced. I mean, I don't feel sorry for him personally; he made his decisions. But on at least some issues he used to be moderate and reasonable, and it's always tragic when a moderate and reasonable politician passes from the scene. Once upon a time, social conservatives hated him because he was willing to make a compromise on supreme court justices, and because he labelled the extreme social conservative right as "agents of intolerance"; now, he has Sarah Palin as his running mate. That's Sarah if-you-get-raped-by-a-relative-I'll-make-you-keep-the-baby-AND-make-you-pay-for-your-rape-kit Palin. Once upon a time, Club-for-Growth conservatives hated him because he opposed the Bush tax cuts. Now, he'll make them permanent at a time we're bleeding red ink and mortgaging the future of the next few generations. Once upon a time, he wanted to run a responsible campaign, and now he's caved to whatever consultants told him he should go totally negative.
I can't remember if I've said this before, and I'm too lazy to read my own posts, but I met John McCain in 2000 when he was running. He came and spoke at Yale, and I hung around after to shake hands and introduce myself. He gave an interesting talk, and seemed energetic and a reasonable guy. I wouldn't have voted for him over Gore, but I at least respected him then. And I was irritated that he got waxed by Bush and Rove and the hardcore Republican attack machine.
I guess over the last 8 years he realized that this would be his last chance, and he wanted the nomination so bad that he made every compromise he felt he needed to in order to get it. That's what happens when you want it too much. And the irony is that Bush is going to indirectly be the cause of his defeat again, since his governance has been so bad that people are desperate for change. That desperation for change led to the Obama phenomenon, which swamped another candidate who waited a long time for a nomination she wanted so bad she was willing to make any compromise to get it: Hillary Clinton.
Fortunately for Obama, he was so new to the scene and such a long shot initially that he will ascend to the presidency without having made too many compromises along the way (though he has made some, especially over the last couple months). He hasn't had a long political career to spend wanting the presidency and systematically compromising his values in order to better position himself for a future run. There is evidence that he has thought about it; for instance, he has avoided taking positions on issues in the past, particularly with regard to expressing an opinion on controversial legal issues, most likely in order to prevent anyone from dredging up those opinions later. But still, for a major candidate he's coming in pretty clean, and it will be interesting to see if that helps him be effective in the presidency.
And to be sure, he'll need every advantage he can get. He will assume the presidency with 2 wars going, a serious recession in progress, a sea of red budget ink, and all kinds of potential crises, foreign and domestic, looming. I don't think he's the answer to every problem, but I'm hoping he's the answer to at least _some_ of the problems. And that's why he'll have my vote come Nov 4th.
Get out and vote, everyone!
Thing is, the 2008 Cardinals proceeded to collapse in that game, surrendering 10 runs over the last 3 innings to find their way to an improbable loss.
So the question that keeps me up at nights is: are the 2008 Democrats like the 2008 Cardinals? It's a legitimate worry, because both the 2004 and the 2000 Dems were.
I figure that Obama needs a 7-9 point edge going into the election because 3 points will disappear due to the Bradley effect, as some people at the end decide that they just can't handle voting for a black man, and then another 3 points will disappear due to voter intimidation and improper elimination of voters from the rolls, as part of the typical Republican suppress-the-vote strategy.
On a different note, it's been sad to watch John McCain become so many of the things he previously has denounced. I mean, I don't feel sorry for him personally; he made his decisions. But on at least some issues he used to be moderate and reasonable, and it's always tragic when a moderate and reasonable politician passes from the scene. Once upon a time, social conservatives hated him because he was willing to make a compromise on supreme court justices, and because he labelled the extreme social conservative right as "agents of intolerance"; now, he has Sarah Palin as his running mate. That's Sarah if-you-get-raped-by-a-relative-I'll-make-you-keep-the-baby-AND-make-you-pay-for-your-rape-kit Palin. Once upon a time, Club-for-Growth conservatives hated him because he opposed the Bush tax cuts. Now, he'll make them permanent at a time we're bleeding red ink and mortgaging the future of the next few generations. Once upon a time, he wanted to run a responsible campaign, and now he's caved to whatever consultants told him he should go totally negative.
I can't remember if I've said this before, and I'm too lazy to read my own posts, but I met John McCain in 2000 when he was running. He came and spoke at Yale, and I hung around after to shake hands and introduce myself. He gave an interesting talk, and seemed energetic and a reasonable guy. I wouldn't have voted for him over Gore, but I at least respected him then. And I was irritated that he got waxed by Bush and Rove and the hardcore Republican attack machine.
I guess over the last 8 years he realized that this would be his last chance, and he wanted the nomination so bad that he made every compromise he felt he needed to in order to get it. That's what happens when you want it too much. And the irony is that Bush is going to indirectly be the cause of his defeat again, since his governance has been so bad that people are desperate for change. That desperation for change led to the Obama phenomenon, which swamped another candidate who waited a long time for a nomination she wanted so bad she was willing to make any compromise to get it: Hillary Clinton.
Fortunately for Obama, he was so new to the scene and such a long shot initially that he will ascend to the presidency without having made too many compromises along the way (though he has made some, especially over the last couple months). He hasn't had a long political career to spend wanting the presidency and systematically compromising his values in order to better position himself for a future run. There is evidence that he has thought about it; for instance, he has avoided taking positions on issues in the past, particularly with regard to expressing an opinion on controversial legal issues, most likely in order to prevent anyone from dredging up those opinions later. But still, for a major candidate he's coming in pretty clean, and it will be interesting to see if that helps him be effective in the presidency.
And to be sure, he'll need every advantage he can get. He will assume the presidency with 2 wars going, a serious recession in progress, a sea of red budget ink, and all kinds of potential crises, foreign and domestic, looming. I don't think he's the answer to every problem, but I'm hoping he's the answer to at least _some_ of the problems. And that's why he'll have my vote come Nov 4th.
Get out and vote, everyone!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Why I love Half Moon Bay, Pt 4
Because you can, on a whim, decide to take a walk on the beach at midnight under the full moon, and when you do, you discover a whole new side to HMB's beauty.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Stirring the Pot, Chapter 4: National Public Service
So, I took the GMAT yesterday. I hadn't taken it since 1998, when it first went on the computer. I took it to keep my student Jose company- he was also taking it in the same room. He suffers from the most extreme case of test anxiety I've ever seen, and so I thought it might help him to have me nearby, as psychological support. He did end up getting his highest score ever, though it did still fall a little short of what we hoped.
The GMAT begins with a pair of essays, one of which is an "issue" essay where you give your opinion on some issue they provide. The issue I was given was: All Americans should be required to perform a period of public service." And that got me to thinking...
As it stands, I disagree with that statement. We have built this country in part on the principle that people should be, to the extent possible, allowed to make their own decisions about their lives. Forcing people to perform public service runs counter to this founding principle. So I don't think it's a good idea to actually implement, even though it is well-intentioned, and would presumably accomplish a lot of good.
But a more interesting thought experiment is to think about a more fundamental question, which is: starting from an assumption that more public service would be a good thing, is there any non-coercive way to increase the amount of public service performed in America?
To answer that question, I started by thinking about public service as a positive externality. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of sitting through a class in economics, a positive externality occurs whenever somebody gets the benefit of a good or service without paying for it. Here's a fun and simple example: fireworks on the 4th of July.
If you think about it, all the fireworks shows on the 4th of July are put on by governments. You might wonder: "Gee, how come nobody puts on a private fireworks show and charges admission?" The answer is that no one would pay- the vast majority of people would simply watch from outside the paying area, thereby receiving all the benefit of the fireworks show without incurring any of the cost. And so, no private party has any incentive to put on a fireworks show, and absent any government action, there wouldn't be any 4th of July fireworks.
Of course, fireworks shows on the 4th are a lot of fun, and it would be nice if there were some, so the government steps in and uses tax dollars to fund the show. That spreads the cost over a nice wide population, and then everyone can come down to the river or the park or whatever and watch fireworks, ostensibly for free.
Positive externalities are like that- something good that you'd want to happen, but isn't going to unless someone, almost always a government, steps in to absorb the cost of making it happen. Put another way, in the absence of intervention, less of something good is going to happen. I'd argue public service is like that.
So, if we accept public service as a positive externality, then the question becomes: how to we remove the externality, and make more public service happen? In my little essay I kicked around a couple of ideas, one of has definitely been implemented, and the other of which has not (to the best of my knowledge).
The first idea centers around the fact that many of our most productive citizens invest heavily in higher education, and as a result of that investment leave school with a significant student loan debt. So one way to increase public service would be to compensate such folks with loan forgiveness based on hours of public service worked. There already exists a program for this specifically for med school graduates, and Americorps allows you to work full-time and earn a $4725 amount that you can use to pay for school or to pay off student loans.
The issue I have with these programs is that they require a significant time investment. What if I only want to contribute 3 hours a week to public service? There's still good work that could be done, and I bet a LOT more people would participate if they could do so at a level more like this. Compensate people hourly with funds that can only be used to pay for education or educational loan foregiveness. With hourly compensation, people who only had small amounts of time could participate, which would likely drive up significantly the number of public service hours worked.
But here's another idea, related in a certain way, but not one I've seen before (though I'm sure if I thought of it, 20 other people already have also): set up a 401(k) for every citizen (honestly, this should be done anyway), and then allow government-approved public service to be compensated at the federal minimum wage on an hourly basis, with the entire proceeds (no taxes) directed to the 401(k).
The people with the most spare time for public service tend to be younger people, since they are less likely to have families or more advanced (and therefore demanding) careers. Young people also tend not to have as much disposable income to put toward saving for retirement. We could divert the energy of youth toward public service, while at the same time building a good habit in saving, and setting them up to be better off economically late in life. There is a lot of wasted human potential that we could harness through public service, and doing so would help grow the economy, which in turn would help set up the government to be able to make the necessary payouts in the future when people were ready to draw on the 401(k)'s. And it's not as if old folks couldn't participate too; I'm just thinking younger folks are the primary target here.
If I'd worked 3 hours a week for the 4 years between college and business school at the current minimum wage of $6.55, I'd have somewhere between $4000 to $5000 dollars plus 10 years of compounding more saved for retirement, plus I'd presumably have accomplished more good in this world than I regret to admit that I have to date.
It's not the hugest difference in the world, but scaled up to a couple million people, it could be a huge force for good. That's all I'm sayin'...
The GMAT begins with a pair of essays, one of which is an "issue" essay where you give your opinion on some issue they provide. The issue I was given was: All Americans should be required to perform a period of public service." And that got me to thinking...
As it stands, I disagree with that statement. We have built this country in part on the principle that people should be, to the extent possible, allowed to make their own decisions about their lives. Forcing people to perform public service runs counter to this founding principle. So I don't think it's a good idea to actually implement, even though it is well-intentioned, and would presumably accomplish a lot of good.
But a more interesting thought experiment is to think about a more fundamental question, which is: starting from an assumption that more public service would be a good thing, is there any non-coercive way to increase the amount of public service performed in America?
To answer that question, I started by thinking about public service as a positive externality. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of sitting through a class in economics, a positive externality occurs whenever somebody gets the benefit of a good or service without paying for it. Here's a fun and simple example: fireworks on the 4th of July.
If you think about it, all the fireworks shows on the 4th of July are put on by governments. You might wonder: "Gee, how come nobody puts on a private fireworks show and charges admission?" The answer is that no one would pay- the vast majority of people would simply watch from outside the paying area, thereby receiving all the benefit of the fireworks show without incurring any of the cost. And so, no private party has any incentive to put on a fireworks show, and absent any government action, there wouldn't be any 4th of July fireworks.
Of course, fireworks shows on the 4th are a lot of fun, and it would be nice if there were some, so the government steps in and uses tax dollars to fund the show. That spreads the cost over a nice wide population, and then everyone can come down to the river or the park or whatever and watch fireworks, ostensibly for free.
Positive externalities are like that- something good that you'd want to happen, but isn't going to unless someone, almost always a government, steps in to absorb the cost of making it happen. Put another way, in the absence of intervention, less of something good is going to happen. I'd argue public service is like that.
So, if we accept public service as a positive externality, then the question becomes: how to we remove the externality, and make more public service happen? In my little essay I kicked around a couple of ideas, one of has definitely been implemented, and the other of which has not (to the best of my knowledge).
The first idea centers around the fact that many of our most productive citizens invest heavily in higher education, and as a result of that investment leave school with a significant student loan debt. So one way to increase public service would be to compensate such folks with loan forgiveness based on hours of public service worked. There already exists a program for this specifically for med school graduates, and Americorps allows you to work full-time and earn a $4725 amount that you can use to pay for school or to pay off student loans.
The issue I have with these programs is that they require a significant time investment. What if I only want to contribute 3 hours a week to public service? There's still good work that could be done, and I bet a LOT more people would participate if they could do so at a level more like this. Compensate people hourly with funds that can only be used to pay for education or educational loan foregiveness. With hourly compensation, people who only had small amounts of time could participate, which would likely drive up significantly the number of public service hours worked.
But here's another idea, related in a certain way, but not one I've seen before (though I'm sure if I thought of it, 20 other people already have also): set up a 401(k) for every citizen (honestly, this should be done anyway), and then allow government-approved public service to be compensated at the federal minimum wage on an hourly basis, with the entire proceeds (no taxes) directed to the 401(k).
The people with the most spare time for public service tend to be younger people, since they are less likely to have families or more advanced (and therefore demanding) careers. Young people also tend not to have as much disposable income to put toward saving for retirement. We could divert the energy of youth toward public service, while at the same time building a good habit in saving, and setting them up to be better off economically late in life. There is a lot of wasted human potential that we could harness through public service, and doing so would help grow the economy, which in turn would help set up the government to be able to make the necessary payouts in the future when people were ready to draw on the 401(k)'s. And it's not as if old folks couldn't participate too; I'm just thinking younger folks are the primary target here.
If I'd worked 3 hours a week for the 4 years between college and business school at the current minimum wage of $6.55, I'd have somewhere between $4000 to $5000 dollars plus 10 years of compounding more saved for retirement, plus I'd presumably have accomplished more good in this world than I regret to admit that I have to date.
It's not the hugest difference in the world, but scaled up to a couple million people, it could be a huge force for good. That's all I'm sayin'...
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Sitrring the Pot, Chapter 3: The Death Penalty
As part of my continuing exercise in publishing all my positions that make my totally unelectable, let me now comment on the death penalty:
I'm totally against it.
It occurred to me to write about it today because the Supreme Court refused to re-hear a case which banned the death penalty in child rape cases where the child survived. The original case spurred a lot of strong reactions because part of the logic of the 5-4 majority was that there was an evolving consensus against the use of the death penalty.
Now, it's not exactly clear to me how evolved that consensus is, but I certainly agree with the end result. There are a lot of arguments against capital punishment, including that there's not a clear body of statistical evidence to suggest it functions as a deterrent to crime, that the amount of appeals process you have to put in place to make sure you don't end up executing an innocent person makes the cost of the capital punishment process greater than the cost of simply imprisoning the person for life, and that even with those processes in place, innocent people end up getting executed anyway, as demonstrated in recent years by the impact of DNA testing on previously tried and adjudicated cases.
Whew. That's a lot of argument against, but these are all utilitarian arguments and to me they obscure the truly important reason:
We are our judicial system, and when our judicial system makes a judgment to take a person's life, we as a society have made a collective, premeditated decision to commit murder, and I believe that decision diminishes us. We as people have to make choices about what kind of society we want to live in, and I believe we should choose wherever we can to live in a society with less violence.
In the past, when I've argued with folks about capital punishment, there is usually a point where someone says, "Well, what if there were a nuclear bomb ticking in Grand Central, and you found the guy who had the shutoff switch, and he swallowed it, and there were only 30 seconds left until it was about to blow, and so the only way you had to get the kill switch was to shoot the guy, rip open his gut, and pull the kill switch out? That's a premeditated act of murder. Are you saying you wouldn't do that??"
This kind of example is lame on so many levels. Among them are:
1) The premise is lame. By that I mean, if we as a society actually wound up in that situation, we just had a massive, systemic failure of our intelligence services, and a lot of people should lose their jobs.
This is akin to the 9/11 situation: since then, the government has massively expanded its powers using the logic that it needs to do so in order to keep us safe. But the problem with 9/11 was not that the govt did not have enough power to do its keeping-us-safe job properly, the problem was that it didn't have enough competence to do it properly. That lack of competence is largely, though not entirely, due to the Bush administration's total lack of interest or ability to find people capable of governing competently. Competent governance would, of course, be evidence against the neoconservative belief that government is always the problem. And neocons don't want to see any evidence they're wrong. And that's why electing neocons to any office is counterproductive. But I digress. Back to reasons why the bomb example is lame.
2) Obviously, if I'm put in a situation where I have a binary choice between an option where one person is killed, and an option where thousands of people are killed, I'll take the option where one person is killed. But that option is still consistent with my original principle of living in a society with less violence. I took the path of least violence.
"Aha!", they usually say, "You're willing to commit murder in order to protect society. That's all we're doing with capital punishment- protecting society from known dangers."
The problem with that perspective is- in real life there's always the option to imprison someone for life without parole, which serves the same purpose of protecting society from future acts by this individual, punishes them for previous acts, and doesn't involve an act of violence. Plus, if evidence is discovered later on that exonerates the person, you can at least partially undo what is now an obviously unjust act, which is having imprisoned the person for something they didn't do. That option is off the table if you executed the person.
Of course, the other major argument people use for capital punishment is that it provides "closure" for the victims and/or their loved ones. Capital punishment cannot possibly provide "closure" to people who have suffered from crimes of the severity that we normally reserve capital punishment for. All capital punishment can provide is sanctioned revenge. And I think it's unhealthy for us as a society to be organized around revenge. There's no answer to the pain of victims, least of all revenge.
This is one of those rare issues on which I agree totally with the Catholic Church's position, so from time to time I think about the issue just to remind myself that they aren't wrong about everything. Their position is consistent with their culture-of-life philosophy.
Last point: one of the single most intellectually irritating strains of people is the strain which simultaneously is militantly pro-life, sanctimoniously lecturing everyone on the importance of not killing fetuses because they're human beings, while in the same breath being militantly pro-capital punishment. That's so inherently contradictory it gives me a headache. For the record, I'm pro-choice, as I noted in a previous installment of Stirring the Pot, but want people to choose to have fewer abortions (choose less violence), primarily by not having unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
So there you have it- another personal opinion that makes me totally unelectable. Ah well...
I'm totally against it.
It occurred to me to write about it today because the Supreme Court refused to re-hear a case which banned the death penalty in child rape cases where the child survived. The original case spurred a lot of strong reactions because part of the logic of the 5-4 majority was that there was an evolving consensus against the use of the death penalty.
Now, it's not exactly clear to me how evolved that consensus is, but I certainly agree with the end result. There are a lot of arguments against capital punishment, including that there's not a clear body of statistical evidence to suggest it functions as a deterrent to crime, that the amount of appeals process you have to put in place to make sure you don't end up executing an innocent person makes the cost of the capital punishment process greater than the cost of simply imprisoning the person for life, and that even with those processes in place, innocent people end up getting executed anyway, as demonstrated in recent years by the impact of DNA testing on previously tried and adjudicated cases.
Whew. That's a lot of argument against, but these are all utilitarian arguments and to me they obscure the truly important reason:
We are our judicial system, and when our judicial system makes a judgment to take a person's life, we as a society have made a collective, premeditated decision to commit murder, and I believe that decision diminishes us. We as people have to make choices about what kind of society we want to live in, and I believe we should choose wherever we can to live in a society with less violence.
In the past, when I've argued with folks about capital punishment, there is usually a point where someone says, "Well, what if there were a nuclear bomb ticking in Grand Central, and you found the guy who had the shutoff switch, and he swallowed it, and there were only 30 seconds left until it was about to blow, and so the only way you had to get the kill switch was to shoot the guy, rip open his gut, and pull the kill switch out? That's a premeditated act of murder. Are you saying you wouldn't do that??"
This kind of example is lame on so many levels. Among them are:
1) The premise is lame. By that I mean, if we as a society actually wound up in that situation, we just had a massive, systemic failure of our intelligence services, and a lot of people should lose their jobs.
This is akin to the 9/11 situation: since then, the government has massively expanded its powers using the logic that it needs to do so in order to keep us safe. But the problem with 9/11 was not that the govt did not have enough power to do its keeping-us-safe job properly, the problem was that it didn't have enough competence to do it properly. That lack of competence is largely, though not entirely, due to the Bush administration's total lack of interest or ability to find people capable of governing competently. Competent governance would, of course, be evidence against the neoconservative belief that government is always the problem. And neocons don't want to see any evidence they're wrong. And that's why electing neocons to any office is counterproductive. But I digress. Back to reasons why the bomb example is lame.
2) Obviously, if I'm put in a situation where I have a binary choice between an option where one person is killed, and an option where thousands of people are killed, I'll take the option where one person is killed. But that option is still consistent with my original principle of living in a society with less violence. I took the path of least violence.
"Aha!", they usually say, "You're willing to commit murder in order to protect society. That's all we're doing with capital punishment- protecting society from known dangers."
The problem with that perspective is- in real life there's always the option to imprison someone for life without parole, which serves the same purpose of protecting society from future acts by this individual, punishes them for previous acts, and doesn't involve an act of violence. Plus, if evidence is discovered later on that exonerates the person, you can at least partially undo what is now an obviously unjust act, which is having imprisoned the person for something they didn't do. That option is off the table if you executed the person.
Of course, the other major argument people use for capital punishment is that it provides "closure" for the victims and/or their loved ones. Capital punishment cannot possibly provide "closure" to people who have suffered from crimes of the severity that we normally reserve capital punishment for. All capital punishment can provide is sanctioned revenge. And I think it's unhealthy for us as a society to be organized around revenge. There's no answer to the pain of victims, least of all revenge.
This is one of those rare issues on which I agree totally with the Catholic Church's position, so from time to time I think about the issue just to remind myself that they aren't wrong about everything. Their position is consistent with their culture-of-life philosophy.
Last point: one of the single most intellectually irritating strains of people is the strain which simultaneously is militantly pro-life, sanctimoniously lecturing everyone on the importance of not killing fetuses because they're human beings, while in the same breath being militantly pro-capital punishment. That's so inherently contradictory it gives me a headache. For the record, I'm pro-choice, as I noted in a previous installment of Stirring the Pot, but want people to choose to have fewer abortions (choose less violence), primarily by not having unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
So there you have it- another personal opinion that makes me totally unelectable. Ah well...
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