After more than 200 years, (and two years of internal meetings, creation of a taskforce, and amendments and compromises) Carroll College in Helena appears to have taken a pretty tiny step forward toward recognizing the existence of the first amendment.
The "change" was reported in the Carroll College student newspaper "The Prospector" [Volume 92 Edition 3, December 11, 2008](not available online), Carroll now has a "Policy for External Speaker Events When the Public is Invited" (emphasis mine, also below):
"Members of the college community must be free to engage the full range of views on a variety of subjects. Even unwelcome or controversial views need to be heard, discussed and analyzed," the documents introduction reads.
"In extending such invitations, however, members of the college community have an obligation to respect the special aims and objectives of Carroll College as described in the statement of mission."
As a Catholic college, Carroll is obligated to treat judgments concerning ultimate reality and decisions concerning ultimate value at both an academic and a pastoral level. This obligation involves the College's relationship to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, defined as "the perennial, authentic, and infallible teaching office committed to the Apostles by Christ and now possessed and exercised by their legitimate successors, the college of bishops in union with the pope."
Okay, so I was away last week. To Baja to kayak on the Sea of Cortez, a trip taken to celebrate my 10th anniversary, and man! An amazing trip. It was also my first trip to Mexico, and I have to say, I enjoyed getting away from everything.
I'm not fully caught up yet, but I see the headlines blazing with Israel's invasion of Gaza - and the Patriots missed the playoffs, but the Eagles already won a playoff game? Anyway, the first thing that made me stutter-step in political news was the news that Bill Richardson withdrew as Obama's nominee for Commerce because of an investigation into the New Mexican's political dealings during his tenure as governor.
While Steve Benen wonders how Richardson slipped through the Obama transition team's vetting process, I'm left scratching my head that Richardson thought he had a shot at the presidency while this was ongoing. His chutzpah in this thing reminds me of Edwards' - running an outside chance at the Democratic nomination with a gigantic scandal hanging over his head.
Now it still may turn out that there's nothing here - but, besides Edwards', has anyone's political stock fallen as far as Richardson? He started out the campaign season as everyone's dark horse pick, then blundered his way through the early primaries, and frankly embarassed himself during the debates. He subsequently alienated himself from his closest allies - the Clintons - with an endorsement of Obama, and alienated himself from the Obama administration with this recent brouhaha. With both New Mexico Senate seats now occupied by Demcrats, there doesn't look like there's much upwards room left for the governor for the forseeable future.
So I just joined twitter. I'm not sure that I know whether I'll really be using it -- or whether it'll ever be political musings. But if you want to "follow" me on twitter, I'm @montuckyliberal.
David Crisp has a long post looking at some books I haven't read, highly critical of the ignorance of Americans. While Crisp is (smartly, I think) a critic of the books, he writes this paragraph:
Whatever her book's failings, Jacoby is on solid ground when she raises concerns that Americans are becoming too plain ignorant to govern themselves wisely. After all, we are five years and counting into a war in Iraq, and most Americans still can't find the country on a map. What's worse, many Americans don't think it's important to be able to find Iraq on a map.
Similarly, most Americans can't name a single Supreme Court justice, and most don't know that the court's job is to settle constitutional questions. Pretty scary.
These sorts of paragraphs remind me of a useful lesson. Humans tend to order animals by greatness in terms of intelligence. But that's a pretty dead giveaway. We value intelligence in large part because it is our competitive advantage. A group of dogs creating a hierarchy of animals may well value smelling ability as the key criterion of an animal's worth.
The particular wisdom of democracy is recognizing that others' concerns may not be our own (this is also the wisdom of markets). So while I like to know who is on the Supreme Court and take no small amount of pride in my ability to find Iraq on a map, those are not necessarily highly relevant issues for a lot of voters (and should we be surprised that people who can't find Iraq on a map think it is unimportant to be able to find it?).
On a completely different note, Crisp notes the reason why frequently complaints about "unreason" are frustrating:
I was a tad disappointed, in part for reasons that appear to be built into this sort of book: the inevitable tone of a nanny, and the sense that what she considers to be "unreason" is really just believing something that she doesn't.
One of the smarter things I read in one of Amartya Sen's books (Rationality and Freedom) a while back was that the entire concept of freedom relies upon the notion of individual choice playing into goals. In some realms we refer to these as tastes (which explain why markets for food exist -- we don't all always want to eat the same thing).
In politics, though, I'm often struck by the concept that people are seeking the same things but by different means. As Sen points out, that means one of two things -- either evidence is currently insufficient for us to determine whose means are better OR someone is being really stupid.
In reality, I think conservatives and liberals truly value different things. Like a lot of contemporary progressives, I'm fairly sold on traditionally conservative mechanisms like markets as devices for solving problems. But unlike modern conservatives, I think things like education and health care for all are ideas worth advancing.
People disagree. That's fine. In fact, much of our political disagreement may be better if we just accepted that fact. We can't "put politics aside" because politics is the decision-making process for determining whose priorities we're adopting.
Montana Republican legislators will be blogging from the legislature. It is worth remembering that the Democrats in the legislature embarked on a similar venture two years ago. The group blog had some worthwhile stuff on it, but never really took off because governing and blogging may take different skills.
We'll see how the Republican group blog fares.
Also worth noting: Nancy Pelosi has a blog. It is also little read. So far, the Rotunda Report (the Montana GOP leg blog) is little more than a collection of press releases. We'll see if that changes.
It appears that the latest fad in right-wing boilerplate legislation (repealling no-fault divorce protection and so-called "covenant" marriage) has hit Montana.
Two Republican legislators, Wendy Warburton (yes she went to thatLiberty University) and Tom McGillvray are trying to give the Government a say in whether or not you should be able to obtain a divorce, and under what circumstances.
They want to make the Government force you to stay married. Even if--say--your spouse used your family's entire life savings to fuel his/her gambling or drug addition and you don't have any money left to feed your children--even if your spouse is cheating on you or even beating on you, you can't get a divorce.
No, you still have to go through a government mandated counseling period and a cooling off period for a couple of years (whereby the spouse can still hit your kids, drain your bank-account, kill your pets, etc.)
There are some obvious practical problems with the whole concept. (1) Who is going to monitor everyone's marriage to make sure that couples are still living together and (2) Laws preventing people from divorcing bad spouses actually prevent people from getting remarried to better people so they and their childlren can actually live safe, happy, and healthy lives.
Keep an eye on these two products from the bad idea factory: LC1977 and LC1954
I have been an environmentalist for most of my life. I have marched, held signs, written letters and spoken to my Congressman. I have built trails and removed invasive species in National Parks. I have educated friends on climate change and donated to a dozen different groups. Countless others have done all these same things for decades in defense of our wilderness and a livable future.
It hasn't worked. Even with a new administration, we are not on track for a livable future. This has been made clear by James Hanson, Bill McKibben, Al Gore and many others. The legitimate pathways to power have not provided us with the ability to defend the survival of our civilization. Yesterday I decided that the crisis facing us requires more critical action than has been taken in the past. When faced with the opportunity to seriously disrupt the auction of some of our most beautiful lands in Utah to oil and gas developers, I could not ethically turn my back on that opportunity. By making bids for land that was supposed to be protected for the interests of all Americans, I tried to resist the Bush administration's attempt to defraud the American people.
At this point it appears that I was successful in my attempts to disrupt this fraudulent auction. The federal officials who took me into custody said that I cost the oil companies in the room hundreds of thousands of dollars and prevented 22,500 acres of land from being sold for fossil fuel development. I had a very open conversation with the federal agents about my motivations and values. They were friendly, respectful, and somewhat sympathetic.
What I did no doubt puts me at significant risk, including prison. But my future was already at significant risk. As we get closer and closer to the point of too late, we have less and less to lose from resisting. Accepting the true depth of the climate crisis is extremely scary, but the purpose of fear is to motivate us to action. Many of us have sat around countless times saying how much we needed someone to do something. If I am not willing to take a stand for my generation, then who will? This year I have come to terms with the idea that I might be my own best hope to defend my future. Hopefully all of us will realize that we are the ones we have been waiting for.
A new study (via Feministing) provides yet more evidence that abstinence-only tactics in sex ed do a fair amount of harm and no good:
Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.
The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.
There's a funny realm of policies where public policy -- actual statutes and appropriations -- are allocated not in any real considered manner to achieve an outcome, but rather to simply express a moral sentiment. Abstinence is good therefore we will only teach abstinence. This common is particularly common-place on the right, although you see it occasionally on the left.
At this point, though, there's really no reason to maintain the charade with sex education. A number of my liberal compatriots interpret ongoing conservative support for abstinence-only policies as an indication that the conservative backers really are only interested in punishing women for having sex. That would be a fair conclusion if we assumed that the decision-making process for deciding what policy to back was rational, but for many of these folks, it is basically just a matter of turning their moral sentiment into a policy statement, outcomes be damned.
Sadly, several years ago, I looked into a Heritage Foundation study defending abstinence-only education. The meat of Heritage's argument was that abstinence was better than birth control or condom usage at preventing STD transmission and pregnancy (data proves it), therefore instructing abstinence-only is good policy. There's still a big missing causal link between teaching abstinence and kids actually abstaining.
As long as teenagers have hormones, they'll have sex. Those rates may rise and fall a bit as mores change, but teenage sex is likely to happen in an educated or uneducated world. Our ability to impact its implications appears to be mostly in our ability to mitigate the negative side effects -- teenage pregnancy and disease transmission.
Note also: there is some evidence that abstinence-only education also encourages anal sex among straight teenage couples. Uneducated anal sex carries a lot of the risks of vaginal sex, plus some others. Driving young people toward higher risk activities (that also are probably generally less likely to result in pleasure) is an odd way of using public policy.
Final thought: I continue to be blown away by the "girls shouldn't be whores" but "boys will be boys" mentality that seems to drive so much of this topic. Honestly, with the presumption that girls are born pure and only tempted by men, you'd think it was us who had eaten the apple. Maybe it is just because of the family I was raised in, but treating the sexual lives of sons and daughters differently creates real problematic dynamics overall.
Chuck Johnson takes a long look at the bipartisan calls for spending restraint in Montana. The budget numbers are definitely tough.
Meanwhile, Paul Krugman looks at why states always have to "batten down the hatches" during bad economic times -- and why it is bad to fund so much stuff through state government as a result.
Krugman also makes the smart point that public investment actually gets much cheaper during recessions -- when both labor and loans are cheaper -- than during growth periods, when the private sector is running up the costs of resources. More good reason for the government to spend now and rein it in when times are good.
Since the other day's economics thread triggered a lot of interesting discussion and debate in comments, I thought I'd take another stab at explaining a bit more about some of what appears to be happening in the economy using my analytical mind powers and a secret decoder ring I found in a box of cracker jacks.
There's a lot of talk about how to deal with the current recession, which appears to be deeper than any the U.S. has faced in a long time. Conventional Keynesian theory, which still underpines a lot of basic macroeconomics, tells us that GDP = C (consumer spending) + I (investment) + G (government). When GDP slows, you need to find a way to pump these numbers up.
Which of these numbers should we focus on? That's an excellent question. Liberals tend to say that the numbers to focus on are C and G. Conservatives tend to say that I is the real one. To some extent, conservatives have a point, but their mechanisms are generally wrong (in my view).
Let's say that our country is experiencing a mild recession. Fiscal policy (altering government spending or taxation levels) may not be the appropriate response. The government's other option is monetary policy -- making it cheaper to borrow money presumably will trigger new investment and new consumer spending.
What we're witnessing right now, though, may be the kind of case where monetary policy doesn't have an impact. In theory, liquidity traps can form -- situations where no matter how low interest rates go, levels of borrowing to increase spending and investment do not occur because consumers and businesses are too worried about the economic situation. With recent reports that some money is headed toward bonds offering a 0% return and still carrying some risk, it is certainly possible that we're in a liquidity trap.
If monetary policy can't induce spending and investment, the other option is to take the Keynesian approach and have the government start spending a hell of a lot of money or cut taxes. Presumably the tax cuts could target low-income people with a higher marginal propensity to consume (MPC). Under Keynesian theory, in a liquidity trap, rich people receiving tax cuts are likely just to hide the money under their beds, not do much in the way of increased spending. The money just gets pulled out of circulation rather than helping build the economy.
Conservatives are less likely to believe in liquidity traps, arguing that it isn't concern over economic conditions but rather concern over government action that drives declines in the Aggregate Supply during a recession. In addition, conservatives raise concerns about the "crowding out effect" where money borrowed by the government crowds out money that would be borrowed by the private sector.
Now, I think the conservatives are wrong on this count. Demand is a more fundamental question for businesses than taxes. A tax hike or new regulations will generally be a nuisance if paying customers are coming in force. Further -- if a country has hit the point where investment is funneling in large measure toward no return bonds, the idea that private investment can be "crowded out" is pretty absurd.
But looking at stuff a bit more clearly, it also occurs to me that Keynesian policies (tax cuts or spending hikes) may be used too often during relatively mild recessions. Other than maintaining some countercyclical programs (those that typically will see more need during recessions and less during times of growth) like Medicaid, SCHIP, unemployment benefits, monetary policy can probably generally take care of these situations. That also avoids us getting into the situation it seems like we've been in for the past decade, where economic stimulus bills pass every year, in what increasingly becomes a parody.
Finally -- our Congressman has been criticizing public infrastructure maintenance and development as opposed to what I assume is private infrastructure development as a means of stimulating the economy (additional details here). What's the right answer here?
That's a good question. Keynes advocated things as silly as paying people to bury money in the ground on the basis that the important thing is simply inducing demand by getting money into the hands of people who want it and are likely to spend it (people with a high MPC). More recent critics of Keynes have taken the approach of advocating for infrastructure investments, arguing that public works both put people to work and create long-term projects of value to society (the idea that roads, energy transmission lines, and other "infrastructure" don't build the economy in the long term is a little absurd).
Interestingly, Rehberg is calling for spending on coal-to-gas and wind plants. I may be in favor of that (or half of that) in theory, but as my libertarian friends would point out, the government may not want to get in the business of trying to predict the ideal energy systems to move to if we're trying to get away from carbon.
There are some other projects that are probably worth evaluating. I still think filling some potholes and fixing some bridges would be a good idea for the country to simply put some people to work doing things that need to be done at some point anyways. Putting energy efficiency measures in place at public buildings creates jobs now and saves taxpayer resources for the long-term. Some new transmission infrastructure could significantly help us export clean energy out of Montana (wed it to a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade policy).
Helpful? Stupid? Both?
What do you think Congress should include in their stimulus package? Should there even be one?
) a while back was that the entire concept of freedom relies upon the notion of individual choice playing into goals. In some realms we refer to these as tastes (which explain why markets for food exist -- we don't all always want to eat the same thing).
