Heritage Foundation analyst Jason Richwine, the co-author of a study claiming the immigration reform bill pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, has decided to spend more time with his family. Or something. His departure from Heritage was hasty, to say the least.
Among other things, Richwine’s “study,” which was widely panned (even Paul Ryan has criticized its methodology) came to conclusions that were diametrically opposed to a previous study issued by Heritage just a couple of years ago. But that earlier effort was issued before Jim DeMint became Heritage’s new chief.
The study’s conclusions were based in large part upon Richwine’s assertion that today’s immigrants have low IQ’s that they will pass on to their children–a racist assumption for which there is no credible evidence. In the wake of the report, Richwine’s dissertation–in which he espoused similar theories–became public, as did the fact that he had written articles in 2010 for a website founded by Richard Spencer, a self-described “nationalist” who writes frequently about race and against “the abstract notion of human equality.”
Heritage could hardly have been unaware of Richwine’s history; evidently, they saw his beliefs as a feature, not a bug.
The think tank has always had an ideological agenda, but the organization has previously made a show, at least, of actual scholarship. This episode has badly damaged whatever credibility Heritage retained. Richwine’s abrupt departure only underscores the damage.
Ironically, had they issued a less “over the top” report, opponents of immigration reform would undoubtedly have accepted it unquestioningly and used it as ammunition to derail reform. This product was so flawed, however, that it has been left to Rush Limbaugh to defend it. As a Maddow Blog post put it “The irony is, Heritage produced this report for exactly one reason: to provide some semblance of political cover to Republicans who needed a credible excuse to reject a bipartisan reform plan. The goal was to help the GOP and the far-right cause. The extent to which this backfired is extraordinary.”
It’s hard not to wonder how long Jim DeMint–an anti-science zealot who wouldn’t know real scholarship if he fell over it–will last.
A recent study found that self-identified conservatives were less likely to buy a product, even if the purchase was cost-effective (i.e., better price or longer-lasting product), if it carried a label indicating that the item was good for the environment. This was true even if they had previously purchased the same item–an energy-efficient light-bulb, for example–when it didn’t carry the environmental endorsement.
Evidently, these political conservatives are so hostile to environmental protection measures, they will prefer–and purposely choose to purchase–products that increase environmental degradation.
Words fail.
Andrew Sullivan’s take on this study’s result is absolutely correct. “This is really a form of tribal nihilism. One party has become entirely about a posture, not a set of feasible policies. I can see no reason whatever that conservatism must mean destroying the environment – or refusing to do even small ameliorative things that can help…Snark is not a policy, although it may be a successful talk radio gimmick.’
A 2006 study by sociologists Stephan Goetz and Anil Rupasingha documented a decline in civic participation, including voter turnout and the number of active nonprofit organizations, after Walmart moves into a community. Those behaviors are markers for social capital, the connections citizens have to each other, characterized by what scholars call “norms of trust and reciprocity.” The importance of social capital had been studied by others, but was most prominently highlighted by Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist, in Bowling Alone, published in 2001.
The Goetz and Rupasingha study also showed that with each Walmart store that opens in a city, social capital further erodes.
I was intrigued when I came across this study, so I did a bit more research.
It’s not just that cities with more social capital are better able to foster local enterprises and resist corporate consolidation, although they are. According to the research, the causality may actually go the other way as well. Where economic power is diffused, political power is more widely and democratically exercised. As economic power becomes more concentrated, civic engagement slumps.
This research tends to support what most economic development professionals believe–a city or town with a widely diversified economic base is healthier. That belief is grounded in a very practical calculus: in cities where there are many employers, the failure of one business is far less consequential than in cities where a substantial percentage of the workforce depends on one or two large employers. That logic is persuasive (and pretty self-evident), but it turns out that there is a substantial body of research supporting the thesis that a diversified economy composed of many relatively small enterprises is not only better able to withstand downturns, but also better able to generate higher levels of civic engagement and a higher quality of life.
According to an article in Grist,
In 1946, Walter Goldschmidt, a USDA sociologist, produced a groundbreaking study comparing two farming towns in California that were almost identical in every respect but one: Dinuba’s economy was composed mainly of family farms, while Arvin’s was dominated by large agribusinesses. Goldschmidt found that Dinuba had a richer civic life, with twice the number of community organizations, twice the number of newspapers, and citizens who were much more engaged than those in Arvin. Not surprisingly, Dinuba also had far superior public infrastructure: In both quality and quantity, the town’s schools, parks, sidewalks, paved streets, and garbage services far surpassed those of Arvin.
At about the same time, two other sociologists, C. Wright Mills and Melville J. Ulmer, were undertaking a similar study of several pairs of manufacturing cities in the Midwest. Their research, conducted on behalf of a congressional committee, found that communities comprised primarily of small, locally owned businesses took much better care of themselves. They beat cities dominated by large, absentee-owned firms on more than 30 measures of well-being,including such things as literacy, acreage of public parks, extent of poverty, and the share of residents who belonged to civic organizations.
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Residents of communities with highly concentrated economies tend to vote less and are less likely to keep up with local affairs, participate in associations, engage in reform efforts or participate in protest activities at the same levels as their counterparts in economically dispersed environments,” sociologists Troy Blanchard and Todd L. Matthews concluded in a 2006 study published in the journal Social Forces. In studies of both agricultural (2001) and manufacturing (2006) communities, the late Cornell sociologist Thomas Lyson also found that those places with a diversity of small-scale enterprises had higher levels of civic participation and better social outcomes than those controlled by a few outside corporations.
At some point, we need to consider the “big box” stores headquartered who-knows-where, and ask ourselves whether those cheap tube socks are really such a bargain.
There is an old story–a fable, actually–about the most effective way to kill a frog. You just put that little creature in a pot of water and slowly but steadily increase the temperature of the water. Eventually, the frog is boiled to death, but because of the slow, incremental elevation of the heat, it doesn’t realize the danger until it’s too late.
I think that story is an uncomfortable analogy to contemporary America’s political situation.
Yesterday, several news outlets and blogs carried this story:
Republicans want to limit the number of bullets federal agencies can purchase so American gun owners can buy more. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe and Rep. Frank Lucas have introduced a bill that would prohibit every government agency — except the military — from buying more ammunition each month, than the monthly average it purchased from 2001 to 2009.
The purpose of this bill, according to the reports, is to prevent President Obama from making good on his plan to have government agencies buy up all the bullets so that patriotic gun-owning Americans won’t be able to buy them.
Think about that for a minute. And then think about that frog.
When I ran for Congress in 1980, I was pro-choice and pro-gay-rights, and I not only won a Republican primary in very Red Indiana, I was accused on several occasions of being far too conservative. In the years since, the GOP has moved steadily–to the Right, then to the far Right ,and then to the far far Right–and finally to paranoid conspiracy fantasy-land. The party of Bill Hudnut and Dick Lugar is now the party of James Inhofe and Ted Cruz.
In 1980, if any political figure had made the sorts of statements that our elected officials–mostly but not exclusively Republican–routinely issue these days, the media would have called for the men in the white coats. But the progression into delusion has been relatively incremental. Lawmakers have slowly but steadily progressed through the stages from ideological rigidity, to extremism, to bat-shit crazy.
The media and the electorate are the frogs who haven’t noticed that the water has gone from warm, to uncomfortably hot, to boiling.
The Guardian recently reported on a speech in which a senior Iranian cleric blamed “women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously” for earthquakes.
If that sort of crazy were a feature only of theocratic or third-world countries, we might chuckle and ignore it. Unfortunately, however, the amount of lunacy right here at home suggests a wider problem.
Speaking of Obama, in the wake of his re-election, Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel explained that that the election result was a “communist takeover” of the United States, and that the IRS will start throwing pastors in jail, invading churches and shooting parishioners.
“The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:
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This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children.”
Well, yes, I think procedural safeguards before killing one’s children as God decreed are probably appropriate…
The Missouri House of Representatives on Monday passed a ban on the United Nations sustainability plan Agenda 21 after a spirited discussion of space aliens and how Walmart could avoid zoning laws to build more stores.
The Republican-controlled House voted 110-40 to ban local governments from adopting the Agenda 21, a broad outline of planning goals and sustainability targets. Agenda 21 was passed by the U.N. in 1992, but has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate and does not contain the force of law in the U.S.
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Agenda 21 opponents argue the U.N. document would seize private property and force people to live in walkable communities with a potential end to golf and scuba diving.
Your elected representatives at work, protecting your nine-iron….
I assume psychiatrists have theories to explain what seems to be a vastly increased prevalence of paranoia, hysteria and irrationality. Or perhaps there has always been a significant percentage of lunatics in our population, and the Internet has simply brought them to our attention–although I don’t recall a time when we have had so many elected officials who either inhabit an alternate reality or keep going off their meds.
How do you talk to someone who thinks short skirts cause earthquakes? How do you get lawmakers who actually believe that President Obama is a covert Muslim Communist and the Anti-Christ to focus on solving the nation’s problems? How do you get people who think Adam and Eve saddled up dinosaurs to understand climate change? How do you get lawmakers who think women’s bodies can “shut down” rapist sperm to respect women’s right to equality and autonomy?
More important: how do we get the sane folks who have thrown up their hands and withdrawn from the political process to wake up and reclaim the country?
