Things That Make Me Pound My Head on the Table….

Is there some way to test newborns for cognitive dissonance tendencies? And to keep those who test positive from running for public office?

Recent (but hardly the only) case on point: Last week, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) wrote a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warning against allowing the child refugees who have been coming across the southern border into the United States, because they might be carrying deadly diseases.

“Reports of illegal immigrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning,” Gingrey wrote. “Many of the children who are coming across the border also lack basic vaccinations such as those to prevent chicken pox or measles.”

And why do I say this is an example of cognitive dissonance? Because Rep. Gingrey is one of America’s anti-vaccine nuts.

Gingrey has long-standing ties to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a far-right medical group that opposes all mandatory vaccines. The organization touts access to Gingrey as one of its membership perks. (The AAPS has, incidentally, taken the lead in pushing the idea that migrant children are disease carriers.) In 2007, he wrote an amendment that would allow parents to block their children from receiving HPV vaccines, which are designed to combat cervical cancer.

Ironically, children from Guatemala are far more likely to be vaccinated against a variety of diseases than kids in Texas, because vaccines are provided free of charge by Guatemala’s  universal health care system, and in Texas, the rate of parents who “opt out” of vaccinations citing “reasons of conscience” has increased every year since 2003.

According to the World Health Organization, there have been no reported cases of measles in Guatemala or Honduras since 1990, whereas anti-vaccination efforts in the United States have led to multiple outbreaks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Oh, but facts are such inconvenient things….especially when you’re trying to make points with a rabid and ignorant base at the expense of frightened refugee children.

Not to mention consistency with your own preposterous positions.

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Well, F**K You, GOP Study Committee!!

I just read this report from Slate’s Dave Weigel on a Republican Study Committee panel’s advice to candidates on how to talk to us simple womenfolk:

The RSC, like the larger GOP, is on a messaging-to-women binge. North Carolina Rep. Renee Ellmers, a leadership favorite who’s often put forward when the party wants a female messenger on health care or jobs, explained that men failed to bring policy “down to a woman’s level” and thus lost votes.

“Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level. Many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they’ve got some pie chart or graph behind them and they’re talking about trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that … we need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman’s level and what everything that she is balancing in her life — that’s the way to go.”

Excuse me?

Earth to study committee:despite what you have evidently concluded, intellectually challenged females like Renee Ellmers, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann are not typical women. They’re just typical Republican women. You may not have noticed this, since (a) you have spent the past couple of decades taking positions guaranteed to drive intelligent women out of your party; and (b) the men running today’s GOP aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, either, if you catch my meaning.

Actually, the utterly tone-deaf and clueless members of that study  committee probably won’t catch my meaning. Or much else.

What’s that term we used to throw around at consciousness-raising sessions in the early days of the women’s movement? Ah yes: sexist pigs.

If the snout fits….

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Ignoring Civics at DOE

The U.S. Department of Education has published draft priorities for discretionary grant programs for next year and has invited public comment.

The current draft includes 15 priorities–none of which is civic education.

To read the department’s priorities you can go here   and scroll down the page. On the upper-right-hand corner of the page you will see the words “Comment Now.” I hope everyone reading this will enter a comment. The deadline is July 24. Tell the Department of Education to include civic education as a priority.

National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) findings confirm that most of our students are not receiving a remotely adequate grounding in civics and government. Those findings are consistent with a massive amount of research documenting a widespread lack of knowledge about America’s political structure and government, and the omission of civic education from the draft priorities is inconceivable to me.

Basic civic knowledge operates like a common language–it allows us to communicate with each other. It is the foundation upon which so much else depends.

Please tell DOE that civics is essential, and that its omission is unacceptable!

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About That Minimum Wage Debate….

Who was it who coined the immortal observation that “It ain’t what we don’t know that hurts us–it’s what we know that just ain’t so”?

I thought about that when I read a recent report  about job creation experience in states that had recently raised their minimum wage.

Economists at Goldman Sachs conducted a simple evaluation of the impact of these state minimum-wage increases. The researchers compared employment changes between December and January in the 13 states where the minimum wage increased with the changes in the remainder of the states, and found that the states where the minimum wage went up had faster employment growth than the states where the minimum wage remained at its 2013 level.

When we updated the GS analysis using additional employment data from the BLS, we saw the same pattern: employment growth was higher in states where the minimum wage went up. While this kind of simple exercise can’t establish causality, it does provide evidence against theoretical negative employment effects of minimum-wage increases.

It has always seemed reasonable to assume that higher wages would depress job creation.  What that simple logic missed, however, were the many factors other than wage rates that influence the decision whether to add employees. The cited study joins an overwhelming body of evidence that the simple equation is wrong.

It’s another one of those things we know that just ain’t so.

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Crime and (Kneejerk) Punishment

How many times have discussions on this blog–as well as others–focused on stupid laws? The drug war (especially marijuana prohibition) is one of the biggest offenders, having ruined countless lives, but everyone has his or her favorite example.

The litany is familiar: who thinks up these rules? Who thought X was a good idea? Why didn’t anyone consider the adverse consequences?

Well, if we want to know what prompts lawmakers to suggest and pass costly measures ranging from irrelevant to unworkable, we have a perfect case study unfolding right before our eyes in Indianapolis.

Our City is experiencing a serious crime wave. There are a number of explanations–and a lot of excuses–for our public safety problem, ranging from insufficient police presence to poverty to administrative incompetence, and it’s likely that all are implicated, along with social pathologies that resist easy answers.

So what are our intrepid lawmakers suggesting? Longer prison sentences for the people we manage to arrest! A quick fix. Easy to understand measures that will allow said lawmakers to boast that they “did something.”

Of course, the “something” they propose to do flies in the face of years of criminal justice research.

Here’s the thing: when we are trying to deter intentional crime (i.e., not a “crime of passion” committed by someone who acted out of a lack of self-control or often, lack of cognitive capacity), research confirms that what is effective is not the severity of the potential punishment–it is the certainty of that punishment. If an individual is considering engaging in a criminal act for which the punishment is 30 years in prison but the chances of getting caught are less than 5%, he’s very likely to go for it. If, on the other hand, the punishment is only 5 years but the likelihood of being caught is 95%, he’s much more likely to rethink it.

As the odds of being punished grow, so does the deterrence.

If we respond to the current crime wave by increasing the severity of punishment, our prison system will just cost taxpayers even more than it does now.

As H.L. Mencken memorably noted, for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

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