Category Archives: Politics

I Claim Success, Even If I Don't Deserve It

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With respect to NC bill S2079, which would require college students throughout the state to tutor elementary, middle, and high school students, I received this message late last night from the office of another state Senator:

I understand that Senator Rand will no longer be pushing this bill.

My editorial on the subject appeared in the CARY NEWS yesterday under the title “Good Intentions Run Amok,” but I’ve seen lots of similar editorials in print and on-line from around the state. And I know some of my friends wrote in to the legislature in opposition to the bill. So even though I don’t deserve all the credit, I claim success in sending this to an early legislative grave.

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Latest from the Anti-Candidate

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With their candidates all but confirmed, the Republicans and Democrats have settled down a bit — but just a bit — while the Anti-Campaign continues at its breathtakingly slow pace. Over in the forum, this morning I posted the Anti-Candidate position on Health Care, for those who are interested.

The position includes two specific ideas that would relieve some of the burden of legal costs for healthcare providers. Under the category of tort reform, and answering the question, “How could we fix this?”:

First, by disallowing every lawsuit filed against any hospital, clinic, or provider within six months of any death or other injury alleged to be a result of care. Why? Because great emotional distress affects our ability to make good decisions. A year would be better, but some period of time is needed for the family to gain some perspective on the event and decide if they believe the provider was negligent or was acting in good faith. It would be even better if cases would be summarily dismissed if the plaintiff and their legal team planned the suit during the hiatus, even if they filed after the time period expired. This wouldn’t end all ambulance-chasing, but it would reduce the number of frivolous, reactionary cases.

Second, by restricting the potential damage awards to be commensurate with the earning potential of the plaintiff and the injured party. As a (non-healthcare) example, if the hot coffee spilled in your lap will cause you to miss work, and the embarrassment of having spilled hot coffee in your lap will cause you to miss more work, then maybe you should be awarded an amount related to the amount of work you’re likely to miss. Unless you’re going to be out of work for 20 years and without your 50-grand-a-year paycheck, you shouldn’t get any million-dollar payout.

Of course, this is just an academic exercise … but it’s still fun.

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63% Oppose NC Forced Service Law

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So far, that is, according to poll results I saw this morning on WRAL.com. I haven’t seen any news stories on this the past couple of days, so I’m not sure what’s going on with it in the legislature, but I have seen a few other comments on the web. It seems the word is getting out; hopefully that translates to a few people letting the legislature know how they feel about it. (Thanks to those who already have!)

Those poll results, if you’re interested, are here. My original blog entry has a link to the sponsoring state senator’s office, if you want to let them know how you feel about the idea.

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Legislating Charity

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Squarely in the category of “that government governs best which governs least”: a proposed law (yes, LAW) introduced yesterday that would require (yes, REQUIRE) North Carolina college students to perform specific community service in order to get their diplomas.

According to the News & Observer story, “Tutoring rule proposed,”

Those seeking a bachelor’s degree in the state’s public and private colleges and universities would be required to spend 20 hours a semester tutoring or mentoring students in public elementary, middle or high schools if legislation introduced by Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand becomes law.

The proposed legislation is Senate Bill 2079, the “Eve Carson/Abhijit Mahato Community Service Program,” dated May 28, 2008. The text of the bill states,

The Board of Governors shall establish a community service program for baccalaureate degree candidates enrolled in the University System…. Under this program, students shall provide mentoring and tutoring services for a minimum of 20 hours per semester to public school-aged children across the State through school programs, faith-based programs, or other service programs…. Participation in this program shall be a requirement for any baccalaureate degree awarded after January 1, 2012.

So here’s a State Senator, Fayetteville Democrat Rand, who proposes to “honor” two slain students by requiring — in other words, FORCING — every other student in the state to perform community service in their names. And not only that, the law would require them to perform service for which they may or may not have any aptitude or desire: the program gives them no choice in the manner or method of their service, but would force them to work with public school children. The N&O said Rand believes this program will “instill a sense of community and responsibility in college students.”

It should instill a sense of outrage in college students. It’s one thing to encourage students to serve others at a time and place of their own choosing, but to force them into a particular type of community servitude in order to appease the legislature’s sense of what they should be doing? Student organizations across the state should mount rapid and vocal opposition to this proposal.

Furthermore, as if Rand’s proposal isn’t far-reaching enough, it actually goes beyond students in state schools to include every undergraduate: “The state’s private colleges and universities would have to impose the same requirement if they wanted to continue participating in two financial aid programs that the state provides to North Carolinians attending those schools.” Note that the students receiving the aid are not mentioned, but the schools: therefore, students receiving no aid from the state whatsoever would be subject to the same requirement.

This is a bad idea, and should be shouted down from the rooftops of every dormitory to the floor of the legislature. Not because community service is bad, but because lawmakers should not be trying to legislate it. If a college decides to require community service as a graduation requirement, students have the choice to go to another college if they don’t want to meet the requirement. If the state requires community service, students won’t have that same choice.

And since this proposed law mandates — requires — what would normally be acts of charity, what other ramifications does that present?

* First, it means that the community service is no longer voluntary, but compulsory. That may seem a small distinction, but what other compulsory service might the legislature mandate? Would our leaders require community service of all of us, and specify what it must be?

* Second, it means that those who don’t participate are by definition lawbreakers — and that the state would punish them by withholding the degrees they’ve otherwise earned.

* Third, it treats students as pools of free labor available to meet whatever pressing or passing need strikes the legislative fancy, when their primary purpose should be concentrating on their studies and learning the skills that will carry them with confidence into the future.

Good intentions, remember, pave the road to Hell. And politicians are full of good intentions.
___

The NC General Assembly web site includes this page on Rand, with contact information. Give him a call, send him an e-mail, tell him this is a bad idea.

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Vive La Difference

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It’s nice to see research upholding what some of us have recognized and celebrated for so long: men and women are different after all. Unfortunately, that reality probably won’t quiet the yelling from the political fringes.

In her May 18 article, “The freedom to say ‘no’,” Elaine McArdle wrote (emphasis added),

Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women — highly qualified for the work — stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.

… if these researchers are right, then a certain amount of gender gap might be a natural artifact of a free society, where men and women finally can forge their own vocational paths.

Aside from the curious idea of a “natural artifact” — why not just say “natural consequence” or “natural outcome”? — McArdle’s article gives a nice, brief overview of the central issue that many women simply don’t want to follow the same paths as men.

Christina Hoff Sommers wrote a more in-depth treatment a couple of months ago, with the provocative title “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?” In her article, Sommers noted that

Women now earn 57 percent of bachelors degrees and 59 percent of masters degrees. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2006 was the fifth year in a row in which the majority of research Ph.D.’s awarded to U.S. citizens went to women. Women earn more Ph.D.’s than men in the humanities, social sciences, education, and life sciences. Women now serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and other leading research universities. But elsewhere, the figures are different. Women comprise just 19 percent of tenure-track professors in math, 11 percent in physics, 10 percent in computer science, and 10 percent in electrical engineering.

After noting an October 2007 hearing on “why women are ‘underrepresented’ in academic professorships of science and engineering,” she wrote,

As a rule, women tend to gravitate to fields such as education, English, psychology, biology, and art history, while men are much more numerous in physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering. Why this is so is an interesting question — and the subject of a substantial empirical literature. The research on gender and vocation is complex, vibrant, and full of reasonable disagreements; there is no single, simple answer.

Yet the hearing apparently found the simple answer: “All five expert witnesses, and all five congressmen … attributed the dearth of women in university science to a single cause: sexism.”

Sommers took a bold stand in her article, charging that the political rationale is unidirectional:

If numerical inferiority were sufficient grounds for charges of discrimination or cultural insensitivity, Congress would be holding hearings on the crisis of underrepresentation of men in higher education. After all, women earn most of the degrees—practically across the board. What about male proportionality in the humanities, social sciences, and biology? The physical sciences are the exception, not the rule.

So why are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physical sciences? In a recent survey of faculty atti*tudes on social issues, sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University asked 1,417 professors what accounts for the relative scarcity of female pro*fessors in math, science, and engineering. Just 1 percent of respondents attributed the scarcity to women’s lack of ability, 24 percent to sexist discrimination, and 74 percent to differences in what characteristically interests men and women.

It seems that some people with power to gain from controversy, or perhaps with power to gain from exercising control, have a vested interest in provoking debates where little debate is needed. In this case it’s not enough, apparently, for them to let gender differences exist and accept them: they have to explain and challenge the differences for their personal pleasure or their personal esteem.

Or maybe some folks just don’t appreciate the differences.

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New Anti-Candidate Positions Posted

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The “Anti-Campaign” continues. This week positions on the environment and the economy went up in the forum; they’ll go on the web page at the end of the month.

On the environment, after noting what physicist Freeman Dyson had to say on environmentalism as a religion:

Here’s our article of belief: “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” (Psalm 24)

We are stewards. As such, we should be careful not to cause more harm than necessary as we use natural resources.

Meanwhile, thank us for our SUVs: they’re keeping the next ice age at bay. 😉

Here’s the position on the environment.

On the economy,

We’re not rich. We’d like to try it sometime, but the “tax the rich” rhetoric we hear all the time kind of cuts down on the incentive. We won’t be releasing our tax returns; we’d rather you laugh with us than at us. Finally, money is a tool; it’s always good to have more tools in your toolbox; and when you loan this tool — whether to the government or anybody else — good luck getting it back.

Be forewarned, though: if you got a subprime mortgage, don’t read the position on the economy. It’ll just make you mad.

So again, if you don’t want to vote for any of the real candidates, vote for the GrayMan! He can’t do much worse than the politicians.

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The Candidates and SF

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On her “Fabianspace” blog, my friend Karina Fabian posits the candidates’ positions on the crucial issue of Science Fiction:

Let’s take just one point: the return of Firefly. I can understand McCain not addressing this — though he’d love the guns and horses, his staff would have to work him into the idea of science fiction as a whole.

But Obama? He’s a democrat — how can he not be aware of a television show? Oh, that’s right. It was on Fox.

Hilary, I think hinted at it with her campaign ad: It’s 3 AM and the terrorists strike. Who do you want in the White House? The answer is obvious:

Malcolm Reynolds.

I love it.

Karina also graciously supported my “Anti-Campaign” in the same blog entry. And even though the Anti-Candidate didn’t get any votes in yesterday’s big primaries (I haven’t seen the results from lower-level races), I vow to stay out of the race until the bitter end! 😉

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L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!

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I figured that sentiment–which I always associated with General Patton but which Wikipedia (that electronic fount of knowledge) assures me is paraphrased from Georges Danton–was appropriate, or ironic, or maybe appropriately ironic with respect to finally clawing my way to the end of Senator Obama’s THE AUDACITY OF HOPE.

It’s audacious, alright.

My take on the book is the same as my observation in a religious discussion a few days ago: it’s interesting that, like eyewitnesses to an event, different people can look at the same thing but see it differently and draw different conclusions about it. Point of view has a lot to do with it, whether because of differences in light and shadow and angle in a live event or because of differences of temperament and education and experience in the case of politics.

My frustration with the book was that as soon as I found some point on which I started to agree with the Senator, he took that point to an extreme I didn’t think was warranted or in a direction that I could no longer follow. But it seems that today politics is much more a game of extremes than it used to be, and I am too much a moderate.

Then there were little things, like this indication of a sort of underlying distrust of the populace, from p. 185:

… if we can prevent diseases from occurring or manage their effects through simple interventions like making sure patients control their diets or take their medications regularly, we can dramatically improve patient outcomes and save the system a great deal of money.

It’s unclear if the Senator has thought through the implications of “making sure” people do anything: it’s one step removed from “making” people do something, which is right in line with the kind of fascism people accuse the current administration of practicing. Is the force of the state going to be used to ensure people take their medications, or eat a certain kind of diet? If so, what else will the state try to control?

We can do with a lot less of that kind of audacity.

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Space Strategy, Policy, Missiles

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New in the Space Warfare Forum: Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado recently called for a new space strategy and space policy, as well as development of “a layer of space-based interceptors.” He made the statements last week at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

For more, see the New Call for Strategy & Space-Based Weapons thread in the Space Strategy section of the forum.

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