Will Sinking All The Boats Make The World Better?

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a piece responding to my, er emm his commentators', critiques about his recent post arguing that social policies designed to "lift all boats", that is improve social conditions of all Americans, are inherently flawed compared to policies designed just to help certain racial groups.  The objection he highlights is quite similar to mine, what I said was:

What actually happened is the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, decided to replace the system where states would have to expand access to Medicaid in order to keep their federal funds for the whole system of Medicaid, with a voluntary system in which states could opt out of expanding Medicaid but lose out on the large amounts of money that would come with expansion.  In short, a carrot and stick approach was turned into an all carrot approach and some GOP politicians decided not to opt for the carrot.

But these unfortunate side affect of a Supreme Court ruling is hardly the fault of "lift all boats" policies.  Indeed, Obamacare was changed from a "lift all boats" policy to an "ask GOP politicians to lift all boats" policy and the fact that some of them decided to say no is hardly the fault of Obamacare, it's their fault.

He argues that, "The courts are part of policy."  Of course they are.  But the point here is that a specifically designed "lift all boats policy" was specifically changed to something else, what I called an "ask GOP politicians to lift all boats" policy.  If Coates doesn't like this change his beef is with John Roberts, not the bill singed into law.  The policy was fine until it was changed, and became something else.

He then moves on to argue that the GI Bill, one of the policies probably most responsible for the creation of the mass American middle class in the 20th Century, was bad by pointing out that American society in the 1940's was rather racist, and so the benefits were not equally shared between blacks and whites.  This is of course correct, but giving one example from 70 years ago focusing on anecdotes about racist bankers and real estate agents is hardly cause for dismissing a whole category of successful public policies.  And keeping all American's poorer, black and white, after World War II would hardly have made a better world. 

My bigger problem with this whole argument is how one sided Coates deliberately makes it.  He categorically criticizes the policies that Liberals have used to make a better world since the 1930's as being fundamentally flawed, and then offers no alternatives of his own.  Quite frankly this is a lazy intellectual cop out.  The classic question of "well, what's your alternative" is a key question to ask in any policy debate, especially one that categorically dismisses a whole type of policy solutions.  Without it we can conclude that any political decision is wrong because any political choice, like any human action, can be labeled imperfect.

Furthermore, Coates ignores the fact that affirmative action, a policy that does focus solely on improving the lot of certain racial groups, has been tried in this country for almost 40 years now and it's failed to close the racial gap in wealth and could be a thing of the past quite shortly.  I'd argue this is because while noble in its intent, its never been very politically viable and has always been dependent on existing in realms where it is highly insulated from the opinions of voters, like universities.  This should be no surprise, as Rick Perlstein pointed out, Hubert H. Humphrey (civil rights hero AND champion of lifting all boats) foresaw this problem decades ago, and correctly predicted the problems it would cause for the Democratic Party in the age of Reagan:

And at a time when other liberals were besotted with affirmative action as a strategy to undo the cruel injustices of American history, Humphrey pointed out that race-based remedies could only prove divisive when good jobs were disappearing for everyone. Liberal policy, he said, must stress “common denominators — mutual needs, mutual wants, common hopes, the same fears.”  

Indeed.

Perhaps it's because he comes out of the world of journalism and scholarly books and I come out of the world of electoral politics that make us see the issue so differently.  He ends by accusing people like me of having a "religion of color blind policy."  If I have a political religion it's that I think the perfect should never be the enemy of the good.  His faith is that the imperfect good is inherently the enemy.

Lifting All Boats Is Still A Good Idea

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a good post up about the disproportionate effects that some states refusal to expand Medicaid as part of Obamacare are having on certain racial groups:

With that said, if you look at a map of which states are refusing the Medicaid expansion, and then look at this report from the Urban Institute, a troubling (if predictable) trend emerges. Approximately a fifth (about 18 percent) of all people who will remain untouched by the Medicaid expansion are black. When you start drilling down to the states where those black people tend to live, it gets worse. In Virginia and North Carolina, 30 percent of those who are going to miss out are black. In South Carolina and Georgia, the number is around 40 percent. In Louisiana and Mississippi, you are talking about 50 percent of those who would be eligible for the expansion but who will go uncovered.

You look at Latinos and get a similar (and to some extent worse) picture. Nationally, Latinos make up 18 percent of those who stand to get health coverage. But in Arizona -- where the legislature is fighting Jan Brewer's effort to expand Medicaid -- Latinos make up 34 percent of those who stand to gain coverage. In Florida, they make up 27 percent, and in Texas they make up 47 percent. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured in the country. The majority of people there who are going to miss out on care -- over 60 percent -- are black and Latino.

This is a great point and a good reminder that some GOP governors and state legislatures might be motivated by more than just a desire to protect "freedom."

The post unfortunately jumps the tracks when Coates argues that this setback shows that policies working to address the problems of all Americans are worse compared to those targeted at specific racial groups:

This is one reason why color-blind -- "lift all boats" -- policy so often falls short. When you have a country grappling with the deep vestiges of bigoted policy, you do not need "colored only" signs to get "colored mostly" effects. 

I think Coates is confusing cause and effect here.  What actually happened is the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, decided to replace the system where states would have to expand access to Medicaid in order to keep their federal funds for the whole system of Medicaid, with a voluntary system in which states could opt out of expanding Medicaid but lose out on the large amounts of money that would come with expansion.  In short, a carrot and stick approach was turned into an all carrot approach and some GOP politicians decided not to opt for the carrot.

But these unfortunate side affect of a Supreme Court ruling is hardly the fault of "lift all boats" policies.  Indeed, Obamacare was changed from a "lift all boats" policy to an "ask GOP politicians to lift all boats" policy and the fact that some of them decided to say no is hardly the fault of Obamacare, it's their fault.  Giving all Americans access to health care is still a great idea, and doing it through broad based policies is still  a much better way to achieve political success that programs just targeted at certain racial groups.

Some Thoughts on Drummer Lee Rigby

Lee Rigby was the British solider who was killed the other day by two maniacs wielding knives and meat cleavers.  This event has been huge in Britain, with a massive investigation by law enforcement and a lot of questioning about why it all happened.  While I think it was evil, I'm not going to waste time denouncing it (although it obviously was a criminal, horrific and terrible act (and kinda of cowardly, they hit him with their car first before they attacked him with knives, not wanting to risk that he could fight back)) because other people can talk about that much better than me. And I'm not going to talk about about why these sorts of acts of terrorism are against Islam, because people who know more about this that me have already pointed this out.

The point I want to make is that Rigby death, while tragic and horrible, is actually evidence of something much more important than the fact that there are some horrible people in the world.  As President Obama pointed out in his big speech the other day:

Today the core of al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us.

They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They’ve not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11.

In short, al Qaida has lost their war.  They are now a shattered and shrinking organization without leadership or direction.  And I'd like to think that this world, a world were would be terrorists are forced to stab people rather than do something much worse was the world that Drummer Lee Rigby fought for, and died for, in Her Majesty's service.

This is not to say that "terrorism is over."  Knife wielding maniacs and disturbed weirdos might still break our hearts and scare us to death with crudely built bombs and butchery.  But their fantasy of the revolutionary overthrown of societies through violence and terror is increasingly becoming a fading ghost.  Like a nightmare you have last year.  Indeed, the greatest political changes in the Middle East since World War II are happening while you read this, with these guys as an almost total irrelevancy.  Osama won no votes in Pakistan recent election, the first free and open one since 1999.

Nothing I write on my stupid blog can ever make up for a wife whose lost a husband, or a son whose lost his father.  But I would like to think that Rigby's noble deeds did in fact make the world a better place.  And that truly, is worth fighting for.

Wanted: More Progressive Policy Solutions

In Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's controversial plan to close 49 elementary schools and one high school passed the Chicago School Board yesterday in a six to nothing vote.  The plan has been met with both large scale local opposition and protest, as well as condemnation from a variety of national progressive figures.  As I see it, the opposition's complaints broke down into three main categories; the plan would damage communities whose schools would be closed; the plan would endanger children by making them walk to new schools and possibly across different gang turfs; and the plan is unfairly affecting minority students.  These are all valid concerns, and people are certainly correct to raise them.  This is, after all, the biggest school closing in Chicago history.

But while protesters and progressives have been making these valid points, they have unfortunately (as far as I can tell) ignored the bigger reason of why this whole plan is being considered.  The New York Times explains it quite well in it's dry prose:

Chicago now has 145,000 fewer school-age children than it had more than a decade ago, according to district data, and the district had already closed about 100 schools since 2001. In March, the Chicago Public Schools identified 53 more elementary schools that it planned to shutter, expecting to save about $500 million over 10 years in a district facing a $1 billion deficit.

I would add that this is the rosy picture.  Our nations third largest school district is one of the worst performing in the country, can not raise property taxes as they've reached their constitutionally allotted cap and has a pension system that is close to complete collapse.

What I find frustrating is that this fundamental reality of declining enrollment (145,000 less students!) and a massive structural deficit ($1,000,000,000!) seems completely removed from the conversations a lot of progressives are having about this plan.  It's as if Mayor Emanuel could keep all the schools open if he wanted to, but has decided to close them out of spite.  But of course he can't, he is faced with a massive shortfall and a current system that he claims keeps 100,000 desk empty in schools every school day.  Indeed, while this is a big school closure for Chicago, cities all over the country have been forced to do the same thing faced with the same structural reality.  Philadelphia recently closed a higher percentage of their schools in a mass closing. 

I think this fundamental disconnect between the structural realities underpinning the closure and the response that seems to ignore these realities is a symptom of a lack of realistic progressive policy solutions for tough problems like this.  We have a lot of policy white papers about why global warming is bad or for the need for tougher anti-stalking laws, but we don't seem to have enough on how to manage struggling, aging and shrinking districts like Chicago Public Schools.  I don't know much about tackling a $1 billion dollar school district deficit you can't borrow for and won't get bailed out of by the state of Federal government for.  But from what I do know, closing failing schools running at half or lower capacity seems more feasible than going to trash pick up one a month city-wide or cutting teacher pay in half.  I guess what I want to see is less anger and more progressive policy solutions. 

Vice On Afghanistan

Vice is one of those controversial things on the internet, especially in the liberal circles of the blogosphere that I tend to hang out in.  The main argument is that some of the founders and employees of Vice have said offensive things over the years.  I won't defend what various folks have said, I would just stress that people like Vice founder Shane Smith have engaged in lots of anti-social behaviors (like getting drunk in Chernobyl and firing off Russian automatic weapons) and expecting more mature behavior from him might be a bridge too far.  But in a world dominated by bloggers and reporters who spend their days shackled to computers in offices trying to explain what is going on in our chaotic and bewildering world, the fact that Vice is actually willing to send people to dangerous places to show us what's going on should be at the very least respected.  How many national security bloggers would be willing to walk through swamps with former Liberian war lords to try and figure out how to better help post-conflict countries or try and find out what it's like to be homeless in Bogota and have to live in the sewers out of fear of death squads by doing just that.

In a world of information dominated by arguments for and against things, the President's speech to Morehouse College graduates was wrong, the Republicans should embrace marriage equality, Vice is a welcome relief in that their "immersive" reporting technique simply portrays the reality as their correspondents experience it and let us come to our own conclusions.  Which brings me to Vice's three part series they just uploaded on their youtube channel titled "This Is What Wining Looks Like."

"This Is What Wining Looks Like" is a three part documentary created by journalist and independent film maker Ben Anderson about the final stage in America's longest war.  It is a highly disturbing look at the massive failures of our efforts of "nation building" in Afghanistan that focuses on the particulars of why efforts to create a functioning state simply haven't worked.  And the particulars are what make the piece so compelling.  It's easy to sit in a room in Washington and make an argument about "counter insurgency" or "providing security," but when the forces you are trying to do that with are involved in everything for massive corruption to keeping boys and sex slaves on their American built patrol bases, the irrelevancy of these arguments is revealed.  It's easy to talk about "training" the Afghan military but when those "trained" soldiers do things like smoke opium in the middle of a fire fight, the failures of the West to create a western style professional military is revealed as well.

The worst part about the piece is how it consistently shows that what we've been told about Afghanistan for years is riddled with lies.  The country is not fixed at all, and might very well be unfix-able, but what is being told to use back home is a series of rosy scenarios that seem designed just to further the careers of western generals and politicians.  Ben Anderson offers no easy answers to this massive mess, he does argue the US made a key error back in 2002 when in the rush to prepare to invade Iraq we made a bunch of norther warlords the defacto government and military instead of trying to build social institutions for all of Afghanistan, and that of course is one of the main arguments of the piece: there are no easy answer in Afghanistan.  But he does show the reality of whats going on, and for that he should be commended.

You should watch it, but viewer discretion is advised. 

Obama's Morehouse Speech

President Obama gave the commencement speech at historically black Morehouse College the other day, and Ta-Nehisi Coates didn't like it.  The speech was basic Obama affair, he pointed out that the historic realities of racism and discrimination have caused in the development of social problems in black communities, talked about how he experience similar dynamics in his own youth and then in a classic Obama shift he called for more personal responsibility among black men:

We've got no time for excuses -- not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven't. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that's still out there. It's just that in today's hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with a billion young people from China and India and Brazil entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven't earned. And whatever hardships you may experience because of your race, they pale in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured -- and overcame.

In short is was a speech very similar to what he's been saying for years.

Coates saw this as something much worse:

Taking the full measure of the Obama presidency thus far, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict black people -- and particularly black youth -- and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that "there's no longer room for any excuses" -- as though they were in the business of making them. Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of "all America," but he also is singularly the scold of "black America."

Singular scold?  While Al Sharpton certainly doesn't say things like this, this message of improvement through self-reliance is a thread in black political thought that goes back to the Brooker T. Washington and beyond.  It was a driving force behind the founding of elite black colleges like Morehouse and Bouie State University where First Lady Michelle Obama spoke along similar themes last week as well.  Indeed, it was the main message of a series of motivational speeches given by Bill Cosby only a few years ago.  Coates should know this, because he wrote a long article about in 2008.        

In addition, James Fallows pointed out that taking a different tone when addressing "our own" isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact it's quite normal:

We all take a different tone in setting expectations for "our own." I can hold Americans overseas to a different standard than I would Russians or Japanese; I can harangue (and have!) my colleagues in the press about why we should do better; I expect something from myself and my kids I wouldn't expect from you and your kids, and so on. The challenge for Obama, exactly as Ta-Nehisi pointed out, is that he is simultaneously addressing all Americans as his own (apart from those who consider him alien) while also in this speech addressing as his own the most historically distinct subset of our population.

Both Coates and Fallows are right that Obama's role as both the being the President and the first black President is what often puts him in very difficult situations, what Fallows likes to call "walking a tightrope."  But Obama's response to this predicament, to give a speech that calls for both more equality and more personable responsibility as a necessary condition of more equality is hardly "scolding" anyone.  It's the commencement equivalent of Uncle Ben's speech from Spiderman. 

What Do You Mean 'We' White Man?

I've been beating up on the discipline of economics for a while now, and I think for good reason.  The doctrine of austerity is a classic example of an economic idea that has caused a great deal of human suffering all over the world that seems very hard to get rid of.  Lots of people have looked at this problem in technical terms, hence trying to lay the blame at the feet of a excel coding error.  But I've always thought that while this example is important, it hardly explains everything.

Paul Krugman has been arguing for a while that psychology is a big factor in the continuation of the cult of austerity.  Particularly the idea that recessions and unemployment are a form punishment for a collective "us" that we deserve for our past transgressions.  In fact, the other day in The New Republic Michael Kinslay came out and said just this:

I don’t think suffering is good, but I do believe that we have to pay a price for past sins, and the longer we put it off, the higher the price will be.

When I read that, I was immediately struck by the old Mad Magazine joke, "What do you mean 'we' white man?"

This use of the "Royal We" to describe how "we" need to sacrifice is both incredible arrogant and incredibly misinformed.  It is arrogant because it of course doesn't call for sacrifices for everyone in society, just those unlucky enough not to wield clout on Capitol Hill.   Cuts to unemployment and food stamps caused by the sequester resulted in nary a peep out of austerians, but when the same sequester caused a potential increase in flight delays at airports in New York and Washington everyone was outraged, and we of course acted without delay to keep that foul scourge from the land.  It is also misinformed because it assumes that no one is already paying the price for a sluggish recovery made much worse by austerity over the last few years.  While unemployed people see their job prospects and potential life time earning power diminish every day, we are told we need more sacrifice, as if no one is sacrificing already.

Kinslay's moralizing helps nobody, least of all the people who are already suffering the effects of the ideology he is promoting.  Sure he calls for raising taxes on the rich, but in that same paragraph says, "The problem is the great, deluded middle class—subsidized by government and coddled by politicians."  Despite it's shrinking nature, despite it's stagnant or falling incomes (in a time of a record stock market and an all time high of corporate profits) and despite the fact that the middle class is increasingly unable to reproduce itself, it is still to blame.  A coddled child in need of a good beating to teach it a lesson.  The idea that the debate austerity going on right now is about economics or "Economics" is increasingly looking absurd, if it ever wasn't.