Maybe I’ve been drinking too much of the seasonal eggnog.
Yesterday, I began to hear reports that Brian Bosma and David Long had decided to reject Common Core. Now, in the real world, that makes no sense–Indiana is well along the trajectory of implementing Common Core, some 75% of teachers endorse it, and most of the opposition comes from folks who automatically resist anything promoted by the federal government (because, you know, it’s being promoted by the federal government), and others who don’t know the difference between standards and curriculum.
Changing back to state-specific standards now will be very costly. So why would a couple of fiscal watchdogs who supported Common Core when Tony Bennett was in office take this sudden U-Turn?
Here’s where my eggnog addled conspiracy theory kicks in: Bosma and Long really, really want to extricate themselves from the no-win mess they’ve gotten themselves into over HJR6. They want to change that second sentence and kick that can down the road. But there’s Eric Miller, with his mega-church primary voters, and he needs to be appeased by winning something. There must be some bone to throw him. The media has turned up the heat on the negligent and/or abusive “Church ministries” daycare operations he’s intent upon protecting. So–let’s let him “win” the battle against those awful feds and their Common Core!
“The approach is simple. First, government needs to figure out what works. Second, government should fund what works. Then, it should stop funding what doesn’t work.”
That, in a nutshell, is Peter Orszag’s summary of a recent, detailed set of recommendations issued by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s law school. He calls it “the Moneyball approach”–going by statistical evidence rather than gut impressions.
The Brennan Center’s proposal, Reforming Funding to Reduce Mass Incarceration, is a plan to link federal grant money to modern criminal justice goals – to use that grant money more strategically– to promote innovative crime-reduction policies nationwide and to reduce crime, incarceration and the costs of both.
The proposal, titled “Success-Oriented Funding,” would change the federal government’s $352 million Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program, by focusing on the government’s current criteria for determining whether a grant has been successful. (Fortunately, given the gridlock in Congress, It could be implemented by the DOJ– it wouldn’t require legislation.)
The fundamental premise of the program is that “what gets measured gets done.” If you are measuring the number of arrests, you’ll increase arrests. If you are measuring reductions in crime or recidivism, you’ll get reductions in crime and recidivism.
A blue-ribbon panel including prosecutors and defense lawyers, Republicans and Democrats, academics and officeholders has signed on to the proposal. As Orszag noted in the Forward:
Based on rough calculations, less than $1 out of every $100 of government spending is backed by even the most basic evidence that the money is being spent wisely. With so little performance data, it is impossible to say how many of the programs are effective. The consequences of failing to measure the impact of so many of our government programs — and of sometimes ignoring the data even when we do measure them — go well beyond wasting scarce tax dollars. Every time a young person participates in a program that doesn’t work but could have participated in one that does, that represents a human cost. And failing to do any good is by no means the worst sin possible: Some state and federal dollars flow to programs that actually harm the people who participate in them.
Figuring out what we taxpayers are paying for, and whether what we are paying for works.
Recently, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote a compelling reflection on achievement as an act of defiance. Life, he tells us, is like a hill, and when you are born at the bottom of that hill, you have a choice between climbing or staying at the bottom.
But this was no “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps” harangue.
The article began with a forthright acknowledgment of the outsized role played by luck and favor in our society–with Blow’s recognition that what separates the comfortable from the needy is rarely as simple as hard work and diligence. As he prefaces his discussion:
I don’t buy into the mythology that most poor people are willfully and contentedly poor, happy to live with the help of handouts from a benevolent big government that is equally happy to keep them dependent.
These are all arguments based on shame, meant to distance traditional power structures from emerging ones, to allow for draconian policy arguments from supposedly caring people. These arguments require faith in personal failure as justification for calling our fellow citizens feckless or doctrinally disfavored.
Those who espouse such arguments must root for failures so that they’re proved right. They need their worst convictions to be affirmed: that other people’s woes are due solely to their bad choices and bad behaviors; that there are no systematic suppressors at play; that the way to success is wide open to all those who would only choose it.
Blow endorses effort and hard work for their own sake, with eyes wide open to the hard facts of life–that is, that although effort and hard work cannot guarantee reward, not working hard will pretty much guarantee failure. He accepts life on its own terms (as Jimmy Carter once said, fundamentally unfair) without using those terms as an excuse for giving up.
We are obligated to play the hand we’re dealt, even when the deck is stacked against us. And the deck is stacked against a lot of people.
I don’t think I am the only person who is incredibly tired of those self-satisfied folks who–having been born on or near the top of the hill–not only brag about their prowess as climbers, but sneer at the “losers” stuck below. (My grandmother used to describe them as “born on 3d base and think they’ve hit a triple.”)
I’m tired of the self-proclaimed, “self-made” businessman (almost always a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant heterosexual male) who is incapable of recognizing his dependence on the social infrastructure that privileged him over more marginalized folks, and unwilling or unable to experience gratitude for his good fortune.
I’m especially tired of the self-congratulatory “smart businessman” who takes advantage of tax loopholes (excuse me, “incentives”) to drive his effective tax rate below that of his secretary, but who nevertheless considers himself morally superior to the “takers” who don’t make enough money to owe federal income taxes.
Ah, the holiday season. This month, we commence our annual orgy of consumerism to the lilting tunes of pundits debating the War on Christmas, the War on Christians and (depending upon the belligerency, politics and general cluelessness of the combatant) Obama’s War on Religion.
Because requiring businesses that offer health insurance to cover contraceptives along with Viagra is clearly an assault on Christianity.
This year, the Supreme Court will once again engage partisans over the proper place of religion in American society. The Court has accepted cases challenging the contraceptive mandate on the theory that requiring that contraceptive coverage be made available as part of comprehensive health insurance constitutes a “substantial burden” on the religious liberty of corporations like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties.
Veteran Court watcher Linda Greenhouse speculates that the anger about this regulation stems from the perception that “the government is putting its thumb on the scale in favor of birth control, or sex without consequences.” Disconnecting sex from those consequences–pregnancy, STDs, whatever– is evidently more important than the significant health benefits of making contraception more widely available. It’s even more important than the documented and significant decline in abortions among poor women when access to birth control is provided.
Whatever the psychological impetus for the assault on this provision of the Affordable Care Act, the legal question–and the most important policy question for a free and diverse society–is whether and when employers must respect the fundamental rights and moral autonomy of their employees. As Greenhouse puts it:
There’s a powerful argument to be made, both in policy and law, that an employer of any faith or no faith who chooses to enter the secular marketplace can’t pick and choose which rules to follow. As some of the federal judges who have rejected the religious claims in these cases have pointed out, no employer would have the right to tell employees that they can’t use their wages to obtain contraceptives, abortions or any other legal product or service. By paying employees as the law requires, neither a corporation nor its owner is endorsing the employees’ choice of what to spend their money on.
What makes providing contraceptive coverage a “substantial burden” on an employer’s religion? It’s not financial–insurance companies have agreed not to charge anything extra for its inclusion. Is it simply the knowledge that some employees will use it?
Would the “substantial burden” logic apply to all sincerely-held religious beliefs? If an employer is a Jehovah’s Witness, for example, should he be able to exclude coverage for blood transfusions? What if she is a Christian Scientist–can she limit insurance coverage to prayer? Can a company owned by Scientologists exclude coverage for mental health services?
In a free society, religious privilege can only go so far. Religious organizations are permitted wide latitude to operate in accordance with their doctrine. Public and commercial enterprises, however, are subject to neutral laws of general application. Police officers who disapprove of abortion must nonetheless protect clinics from would-be bombers. Racist shop owners cannot refuse to serve black customers. Whatever their owners’ beliefs, commercial enterprises can’t hire and fire on the basis of race, gender and religion.
In America, people who choose to engage in commerce do not thereby control fiefdoms populated by peasants whose material and spiritual lives are theirs to direct.
Hobby Lobby is not being victimized by laws that prevent its owners from privileging their own religious beliefs at the expense of their employees. The only religious war is the one these “Christians” are waging.
I have a theory about why people are so agitated these days. I think it is because our daily lives have become too complicated–because it is increasingly impossible for any one person to truly understand–let alone master– the various social and scientific systems on which we increasingly rely.
Let’s be honest: how many of us really understand how the financial sector works? How government policy affects the Internet? The intricacies of tax or regulatory policies? Reading the current punditry about the Affordable Care Act leads inexorably to one conclusion–no one knows very much about medical practice, the healthcare industry or the ACA. Not to mention the construction of a website.
Technology is an increasingly important part of our everyday lives, but I know I’m not the only person who can’t fix my own car, and whose first and only response to a computer malfunction is to reboot. Very few of us have the background or expertise to independently evaluate claims about climate change or the loss of biodiversity.
My programmable thermostat says its 69 degrees in my house. It feels colder, but who am I to argue with that sophisticated new piece of technology?
As the world around us gets more complicated, our discomfort over losing personal control of our lives increases. Different people react differently to this perception that we are at the mercy of systems beyond our ken or control: some simply “opt out,” become disengaged. (“My vote/participation makes no difference, so why bother?”) Others retreat into simplification and ideology. (“If government would just get out of the way/ if we lived by biblical principles/if parents would ban video games everything would be better.”)
As we lose control (or the illusion of control) over ever greater portions of our lives, we need to recognize what may be the most pressing issue posed by an ever-more complex modern society: the need to know who to trust. How do we identify those who are truly expert and honest, those who are not spinning or denying or manufacturing evidence, those who are reliable interpreters of their particular disciplines?
It’s hard enough to find a trustworthy auto mechanic when you don’t really know how your car functions.
Right now, Americans don’t trust anyone. Not the media, not the government, not academics, not businesspeople. As a result, we can’t even agree on what our problems are, let alone agree on solutions.
When you don’t trust anyone, when you don’t know whose description of the world you inhabit is correct, that world becomes a very scary place.
We won’t regain a sense of control until we collectively decide who we can trust. I have no idea how we do that.
