If only issues were as simple and uncomplicated as people think they are…
Indiana Representative Todd Rokita has proposed to ban the practice of providing free lunches to all students in schools where over 40% of the students are eligible for such lunches. He wants to limit the program so that only the students who qualify eat free.
Sounds reasonable enough; as Indianapolis Star editor Tim Swarins recently framed the issue in an editorial defending Rokita’s proposal, why should we spend tax dollars to feed children who (presumably) can afford to pay for their lunches?
Well, there are several reasons, actually, and the one that should be most compelling to Mssrs. Rokita and Swarins (had they bothered to investigate) is financial.
It turns out that the cost of managing the paperwork and processes required to verify who is and who is not eligible for the free lunch is not inconsiderable. In fact, I’m told that the time and effort previously spent determining and confirming continued eligibility often exceeded the cost of simply providing meals for all the children in schools where there are high percentages of impoverished youngsters. (In case you haven’t been in a school cafeteria recently, they aren’t getting filet mignon.)
There are also humanitarian concerns. In schools where children must demonstrate eligibility for the free lunches, those who pay for their food with vouchers or other required identification are often stigmatized by their classmates. Not only is this demeaning for those children, studies suggest that it creates a disincentive to participate–with the result that some percentage of children from families that would clearly qualify simply refuse to apply.
It would be so gratifying if our elected officials–and those in the media who cover them–would take some time to actually investigate the issues involved, instead of jumping to the conclusion that any decision they don’t immediately understand must be wrongheaded and/or wasteful.
According to yesterday’s New York Times,pragmatism about climate change is beginning to trump politics at the local level. The article focused primarily on candidates in Florida, where rising sea levels and other consequences of global warming have become too obvious for local Republican candidates to ignore. But the article also quoted Carmel’s Mayor, Jim Brainard, who has defied his national party’s fealty to Big Oil (more than 58% of Congressional Republicans deny the reality of climate change) and who has worked actively to reduce Carmel’s carbon footprint.
“I don’t think we want to be the party that believes in dirty air and dirty water,” Mr. Brainard said, noting that the Environmental Protection Agency was founded under President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican.
Contrast Brainard’s eminently sensible approach with that of Indiana Congressman Todd Rokita, who recently told the Purdue Exponent that claims about global warming are still “under debate,” and that the belief in anthropogenic climate change is “arrogant,” because after all, who are we to think our human activities could change God’s climate?
When asked by a constituent about government subsidies for renewable energy sources like wind and solar, Rokita said that he respects “God’s green earth,” but that the private market should decide which energy sources receive funding.
Evidently Rokita hasn’t noticed the massive subsidies we taxpayers are providing to the (enormously profitable) fossil fuel industry.
It would be easy enough to dismiss Rokita and the other dogged defenders of the energy status quo as politicians pandering to a know-nothing base. As a 2012 article from Scientific American pointed out, however, these anti-science attitudes not only threaten America’s economic future, they represent a dramatic–and dangerous–departure from traditional American values.
The Founding Fathers were science enthusiasts. Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer and scientist, built the primary justification for the nation’s independence on the thinking of Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and John Locke—the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. He called them his “trinity of three greatest men.” If anyone can discover the truth by using reason and science, Jefferson reasoned, then no one is naturally closer to the truth than anyone else. Consequently, those in positions of authority do not have the right to impose their beliefs on other people. The people themselves retain this inalienable right. Based on this foundation of science—of knowledge gained by systematic study and testing instead of by the assertions of ideology—the argument for a new, democratic form of government was self-evident.
The authors warned that the anti-science posture of contemporary politicians “reflect an anti-intellectual conformity that is gaining strength in the U.S. at precisely the moment that most of the important opportunities for economic growth, and serious threats to the well-being of the nation, require a better grasp of scientific issues.” Anti-science positions occur at both ends of the ideological spectrum, from anti-vaccine activists on the left to climate change deniers on the right.
By falsely equating knowledge with opinion, postmodernists and antiscience conservatives alike collapse our thinking back to a pre-Enlightenment era, leaving no common basis for public policy. Public discourse is reduced to endless warring opinions, none seen as more valid than another. Policy is determined by the loudest voices, reducing us to a world in which might makes right—the classic definition of authoritarianism.
The entire article is well worth reading, but I found this paragraph particularly compelling:
“Facts,” John Adams argued, “are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” When facts become opinions, the collective policymaking process of democracy begins to break down. Gone is the common denominator—knowledge—that can bring opposing sides together. Government becomes reactive, expensive and late at solving problems, and the national dialogue becomes mired in warring opinions.
When Congressmen like Rokita substitute convenient and uninformed opinion for science and fact, they threaten both our planet and our democracy.
I have been appalled by the heartless and ignorant rhetoric from our lawmakers about the refugee children who are in the U.S. seeking safety and asylum. It’s beyond ironic that most of it is being spewed by self-proclaimed pious “Christians.”
It’s bad enough that Indiana’s Governor–presumably playing to the GOP’s hysterically anti-immigrant base–wants these children returned immediately to their families. (Do not pass go, do not collect due process of law….) It’s beyond embarrassing that Republican members of Congress want the Administration to ignore the law, signed by President Bush, that sets out an orderly procedure for determining the children’s status– at the same time they are suing Obama for purportedly ignoring laws.
U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., suggested Monday that immigrant children from Central America could be carrying the ebola virus that has killed some 800 people this year in West Africa.
West Africa. Right next door to Central America. You really know your geography, Representative Rokita. As the newspaper noted,
No human ebola illness ever has been contracted in the Western Hemisphere and none of the 30,340 unaccompanied minors released this year to relatives or sponsors, including the 245 children placed in Indiana homes, have ebola, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The refugee agency notes on its placement reporting website that all children receive vaccinations and medical screenings before being released to a relative or sponsor and no child is released who has a contagious condition.
Rokita said he doubts that claim and suggested the better course would be to keep all the children together in one place — ignoring the fact that infectious diseases spread fastest among large groups.
The story quoted Rokita as warning that “if more children are released to Hoosier relatives, they’ll soon enroll in school and “ultimately your property taxes are going to go up.”
Because god forbid you’d pay a few cents more in property taxes to shelter and educate a couple of hundred frightened, dislocated children.
Now that I think about it, didn’t Jesus say “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto me–but only if their papers are in order, they can prove they don’t have ebola, and they won’t cost me any money”?
Yes, after listening to those good Christians Pence and Rokita, I’m sure that was the quote.
When Todd Rokita was Secretary of State, he was the person primarily responsible for Indiana’s effort to disenfranchise poor and minority voters by requiring photo IDs.
He piously assured Hoosiers that this effort was prompted by his concerns over rampant “vote fraud.”
Of course, research has conclusively shown that instances of in-person vote fraud are virtually non-existent; they constitute an infinitesimal percentage of votes cast, and most of those cases occur as part of absentee voting, not in-person casting of a ballot.
Now that he is a U.S. Representative, Rokita has emerged as a climate-change denier. (Why am I not surprised? Clearly, facts and empirical evidence are irrelevant to him.)
So–Rokita sees things that aren’t there (vote fraud) and doesn’t see things that are there (climate change). I think it’s time for an intervention–starting with a removal from public office, where delusional people can do real damage.
The Hoosier state has far too many embarrassments posing as elected officials. We really need to thin the herd.
Maybe we really are in the “End Times.” I entirely agree with what a Tea Party Senator has just said.
Utah Senator Mike Lee was arm-in-arm with crazy Ted Cruz during the recent shenanigans that shut down the government. But in the wake of that fiasco, he has made a speech that at the very least shows a self-awareness we are not accustomed to seeing from Tea Party folks, and in places sounds positively progressive!
“Especially in the wake of recent controversies, many conservatives are more frustrated with the establishment than ever before,” Lee said. “And we have every reason to be. But however justified, frustration is not a platform. Anger is not an agenda. And outrage, as a habit, is not even conservative.”
Instead of “outrage, resentment, and intolerance,” the party should project a message—and more than a message, a principle—of “optimism,” he said.
“American conservatism, at its core, is about gratitude, and cooperation, and trust, and above all hope,” Lee said. “It is also about inclusion. Successful political movements are about identifying converts, not heretics.”
But the paragraph that most struck me was one in which Lee actually seems to occupy reality, and to see what most Tea Party folks resolutely refuse to acknowledge:
“This opportunity crisis,” he continued, “presents itself in three principal ways: immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty; insecurity in the middle class, where families just can’t seem to get ahead; and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites unfairly profit at everyone else’s expense. The Republican Party should tackle these three crises head on.”
Actually, I’d settle for a GOP that wasn’t insistent on making them worse.
That said, if this speech actually represents Mike Lee’s current perspective, it is immensely welcome–if considerably overdue. Maybe we could get him to talk to several members of Indiana’s Congressional delegation.
I’m especially looking at you, Todd Rokita and Marlin Stutzman.
