Evidence and Ideology

Americans are absolutely smitten with detective shows where justice triumphs after a painstaking collection and analysis of all available evidence. The popularity of these shows reflects—accurately, I think—America’s pragmatic culture, our desire to “get to the bottom of things” and to base decisions on hard evidence.

 

So how do we explain an American policy process that increasingly displays a positive contempt for evidence?

 

There are all sorts of examples: twenty-five years of research has overwhelmingly demonstrated that the drug war is a costly and counterproductive fiasco. Legislators have responded by waging our war on drugs more enthusiastically. We have scientific unanimity on the reality of global warming. Our elected officials “pooh-pooh” climate change. On July 19, the New York Times reported yet another case of the Administration’s “don’t confuse me with the facts” approach to federal legislation. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings joined several Congressional Republicans announcing a proposal to spend $100 million dollars on a school voucher “pilot project.”

 

Education vouchers are a policy near and dear to the hearts of the political right, albeit for different reasons: the Christian right wants tax dollars to support religious schools; libertarians see education as a consumer good to be provided by the market; and a sizable number of ordinary folks who have never been happy about junior sitting next to a black classmate see vouchers as a way to re-segregrate.

 

Except for those who are ideologically committed to them, vouchers don’t generate much political support among people satisfied with public school performance. However, it is undeniable that students at many public schools are not performing well. Voucher proponents thus argue that fairness requires sending children from failing public schools to private ones that are “better.”

 

The problem is, there is no evidence that private schools do a better job of educating the children who attend “failing” public schools. (Comparing kids whose parents are willing to spend the money to send them to private schools to kids whose parents often don’t even make the effort to see that they get to public school is not comparing apples to apples.) Most poorly-performing public schools have large populations of children who do not come prepared to learn: they are disproportionately poor, disproportionately from broken homes, often come to school hungry, and so forth. Before they can learn, these barriers must be addressed.  

 

The Department of Education decided to do what good detectives do: look at the evidence. The Department studied 725,000 children in public and private schools, controlling for student background, and discovered that—with the exception of a small difference in 8th grade reading scores—public school students did as well or better than those in private schools. Secretary Spelling later said she didn’t know about the study her own department had conducted, and a Department underling dismissed it as “a technical analysis.”

 

On TV, when the DNA evidence exonerates our suspect, we look for the guy who really committed the crime. In Washington, when evidence undermines our ideology, we ignore it.

Tea Leaves & Bumper Stickers

I think I just took a poll.

 

It wasn’t scientific—in fact, it could more aptly be characterized as a series of anecdotes. But interesting, for what it may be worth, and what it may suggest about changing political passions in these polarized times.

 

As most of my friends and acquaintences know, I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads simply “Ex Republican.” It is the only message on my car, and something of a departure from my usual disinclination to use my transportation as a billboard for my politics, my religion or my philosophy. I put it there three years ago, and I tend to forget it’s there, but the last couple of weeks have provided me with pretty constant reminders.

 

For one week every summer for a number of years, my husband and I have taken assorted kids—and more recently, grandkids—to a beach in South Carolina. This year, he and I took an extra week and drove down the

Blue Ridge Parkway

. (For those who have never done so, I commend the experience; the National Park Service has done a magnificent job maintaining this spectacular route through the mountains. It would be nice if more of our federal budget went to such endeavors, and less to blowing people up in Iraq—but I digress.)

 

On a country road in Virginia, a woman driving a pickup truck honked at us and motioned for my husband to roll down his window. Mystified, he did so. She gave us a “thumbs up,” and when we still looked puzzled, yelled “I love your bumper sticker! Me too!”

 

When we stopped at a hotel, the bellman smiled broadly and told us he loved our bumper sticker. When we pulled over at one of the scenic overlooks along the

Blue Ridge Parkway

, a man driving out of the same overlook in a car with a faded Bush/Cheney sticker leaned out his window and told us he sure did agree with our bumper sticker. The most enthusiastic response came from the owner of an Inn in Blowing Rock, North Carolina; he took one look, started to laugh, and said “That bumper sticker just earned you a discount on your room!” He was as good as his word—we got 30% off the listed rate!

 

I must admit to being floored by these and a number of similar reactions. We were driving through the south, after all—through very red states. And we undoubtedly passed plenty of people who muttered uncomplimentary things under their breath, or at least disagreed with the sentiment plastered on our car. But I also don’t think these reactions were meaningless, or that they should be discounted. I think they reflect a growing national mood, made up of equal parts disgust with Congressional corruption, and the belated realization that a President who understands the importance of national parks and global realities (among other things) might be a better choice than one we’d like to have a beer with.

 

 

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And Now, a Word About the Good Guys

It’s easy to get discouraged about what is happening to America, easy to forget how many really wonderful people are working in every community to make a positive difference and fulfill America’s promise.

 

I have been working on a small research project. Most recently, that research has involved interviewing the directors of community and human development organizations. These people head up all kinds of projects, from all parts of the country—there’s a Mission on an Arizona reservation, several neighborhood organizers in Chicago and Indianapolis, a youth leadership program in Witchita, and many others.

 

These were very different people, with very different organizational missions. But all were dedicated, street-smart, and utterly without self-importance. Their offices were often difficult to find (admittedly, I’m direction-impaired), and always what real estate types would classify as “Type C” or worse. They had computers, but no gee-whiz technologies. No self-respecting CEO would work an hour for what they were being paid.

 

What they did have were compelling stories: of this refugee helped to create a new life, of that worker still able to get to his job thanks to a campaign that kept the neighborhood’s bus service, of the garbage collector given the encouragement (and tutoring) that allowed him to address a state senate committee and ultimately change public policy, of the middle manager who had been a welfare mother the organization taught to read while providing child care.

 

Not earth-shattering victories, to be sure. But the people I interviewed were nothing if not realists. They relished their victories, small as those might seem to our political pontificators. Every single one used the phrase “one on one” to describe their work with clients and volunteers. Every single one cited “patience” as a necessary quality for the changes they were trying to effect. Every single one stressed the importance of listening—to their volunteers, to their clients, and to their communities. There wasn’t an ideologue among them.  

 

Coincidentally, I’d just gotten home from a round of these interviews when I picked up the Indianapolis Star and saw that Karl Schneider had died. Karl was vice-Principal at Arsenal Tech when I first moved downtown with three teenage boys still in school. I’d heard about how “dangerous” Tech was, and that was the image I took to my first conversation with Karl. He looked at me over his glasses, and asked “have your sons had fights at their other schools?” When I said no, he said “Then they probably won’t here. If kids want to find trouble, they can find it at Tech; if they don’t, they won’t.”

 

He was right. My kids had a fabulous experience at Tech. Karl was one of Tech’s many dedicated, gifted teachers who believed in young people, and in the power of education.

 

On this 4th of July, I celebrated the Americans like Karl Schneider and the people I had interviewed. Their unsung, unrelenting, and often unrewarded efforts to achieve America’s promise of “equality and justice for all,” may save us yet.  

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Healthy Societies

One reason the legal recognition of gay marriage or civil unions is so important is very prosaic: health insurance. Currently, if you are gay and don’t work for an enlightened employer, you cannot put your partner (or your partner’s children unless you have somehow established a legal relationship with them—itself not easy) on your health insurance.

 Of course, that assumes your employer even offers health insurance. And the number of employers who do is declining.

 The bottom line is that America’s refusal to deal with our dysfunctional health system in a rational way affects gays and lesbians and poor people disproportionately. It is one more example why bad public policy—and not just bad policy on obviously gay-related issues—is especially important to the gay community. (The same thing is true of the battle over “net neutrality”—if the giant telecoms get their way, the web sites that will be hurt will disproportionately be those with fewer resources, those espousing less “mainstream” opinions. There are many issues with grave consequences to the community that are not “gay” issues.)

 So what would a rational, economically and fiscally sound, humanitarian and fair health system look like? What if the country were to go to a “single payer” health insurance system funded through tax revenues and administered through selected insurance companies, as is done in western Europe?

  •  Increased economic development/job creation and competitiveness with foreign companies. Businesses currently expend an amount in excess of total net profits on health insurance for employees. The cost of health insurance is the single largest “drag” on new job creation. For companies that can afford to offer health insurance, negotiating and administering those benefits, and complying with government regulations attendant to them, consumes untold hours of HR time as well. (It should be noted that doctors’ overhead would similarly decline: currently, medical offices spend considerable sums on personnel whose sole job is confirming insurance coverage, complying with insurer regulations, submitting claims and collecting amounts due.) Smaller companies—the engines of economic growth—are often unable to offer benefits, putting them at a competitive disadvantage for good employees. If health coverage was de-coupled from employment, these enterprises would be able to add workers. Employers could also increase wages by some percentage of the amount currently being paid for insurance.
  • The additional tax revenues needed to accomplish this would be minimal, for the following reasons: governments at all levels already expend huge amounts for health, through Medicaid and other federally required programs (Mothers and Children, AIDS, etc.), through benefits for public employees (Universities, police, public school teachers, etc.), and through support for public hospitals. A national system could effect considerable savings, by standardizing paperwork and administrative procedures (it is estimated that 30% of U.S. healthcare costs are administrative); negotiating with insurers to administer the program on condition that the premium structure eliminate marketing costs that are now included; providing more effective public health and prevention services; and by negotiating with drug manufacturers and other medical vendors for lower prices. Cost controls would also be enhanced by eliminating the practice of cost-shifting by hospitals (where those with insurance pay prices that have been inflated in order to cover the costs that cannot be recovered from those without), and by efficiencies of scale. Costs also decline when people are able to access routine medical care soon after the onset of symptoms, rather than visiting far more expensive emergency rooms when they can no longer ignore the problem.
  •  Individuals would save money. Auto and homeowners insurance premiums would decline, because the underwriting would no longer need to take the costs of medical care into account. The considerable percentage of citizens who are currently uninsured would not incur significant out-of-pocket costs attributable to illness or accident.
  • If all citizens had basic health coverage, we would also experience a decline in the social costs associated with the current dysfunctional system. Over 50% of personal bankruptcies are attributable to medical bills; those bankruptcies cost businesses millions of dollars, and are a drag on the economy. Employees with pre-existing conditions would no longer be chained to jobs they dislike. Absenteeism could be expected to decline. Immunizations would increase, and infant mortality decline. Studies also suggest that violent crime rates decline as social safety nets increase. While not quantifiable, these consequences are significant.

 And gay families would no longer face barriers to adequate medical care that straight citizens don’t face.    

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Desecrating the Flag

Nothing demonstrates the differences in Americans’ worldviews more vividly than disagreements over periodic efforts to ban flag “desecration.”

 

Many officeholders who are currently promoting this effort are, of course, doing so cynically, in a frantic effort to change the national dialogue and divert attention from a government that looks more dysfunctional every day. But many people support a constitutional amendment out of a sincere belief that such a move would demonstrate respect for the country and recognize the sacrifices so many of our soldiers have made over the years.

 

Many, if not most, of the amendment’s supporters readily acknowledge that flag-burnings are rare (according to the numbers I’ve seen, there have been fewer than 45 documented cases in the last half-century). Some of them will even concede that the passage of such an amendment is likely to spur more such acts of defiance rather than reducing that already low number. But putting a halt to some epidemic of civil disrespect is not the point; supporters don’t want to control social behavior, they want to send a “patriotic message.”

 

Those of us who look at this proposal with dismay are not—as the Ann Coulters of the world insist—traitors, terrorists or anti-American provocateurs. Actually, we believe we are the real patriots. We just define patriotism differently.

 

The United States Constitution and Bill of Rights gave America the best, most workable, most enlightened governing structure yet devised. Certainly, it is the system most respectful of individual dignity and autonomy. The flag—the cloth emblem that legend tells us was devised by Betsy Ross—is a physical symbol of that system. People honor the flag by respecting the Constitution, and they desecrate it when they elevate the piece of cloth over the principles and values that make it worthy of respect.

 

When we approve government actions inconsistent with our most basic governing premises, we are desecrating the flag.

 

When those we elect to high office routinely ignore the foundations of republican government—separation of powers, accountability, the insistence that—as John Adams put it—we are “a government of laws, not men,” they are desecrating the flag.

 

When our lawmakers intrude in areas that are simply no business of the government, whether it’s Congress insisting that fourteen state court decisions have been wrong, and Terry Schaivo’s feeding tube cannot be disconnected, or South Dakota lawmakers deciding that it is their place to criminalize a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy, or a Pennsylvania school board deciding that their religion should be taught in lieu of science in public school classrooms, those lawmakers are desecrating the flag.

 

A President who unilaterally designates people as “enemy combatants” and imprisons them indefinitely without permitting review of that designation by the courts, or who issues “signing statements” declaring that he has no obligation to comply with acts of Congress he doesn’t like, is desecrating the flag.

 

I have a radical suggestion: let’s honor the flag by insisting that our elected officials respect the Constitution it symbolizes. 

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