Thankfully the Democrats in the House Science Committee took care of dismembering this forward, so I don’t have to.

OUT OF FOCUS: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE SENATE REPORT, “THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION: UNDER THE MICROSCOPE”

The issue of reliable news sources is another major problem, but at least this email goes beyond the usual “my cousin Jim heard about how Obama isn’t an American citizen…”, giving the reader a chance to verify the reliability of the information.

On to the email!

It might seem hyperbolic to say that Republicans have declared a war on women. Sadly, it’s not.

Just take a look at the top 10 shocking, crazy things Republicans have proposed in recent weeks. If you think this constitutes a war on women, please share this email far and wide—forward it, and post it on Facebook and Twitter.

I wish I could say these were the only examples of the Republican war on women. But it’s just a sampling, and more is sure to come—unless we raise a ruckus and call them out. So please, share this email today.

Thanks,

Kat

Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP War on Women

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women’s access to abortion care, they’re actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven’t.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to “accuser.” But victims of other less gendered crimes, like, burglary, would remain “victims.”

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.

5) In Congress, Republicans have proposed a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids’ preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8.) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress voted yesterday on a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn’t enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can’t make this stuff up).

Please share this email today. Just click the links to post on Facebook and Twitter.

Sources:
1. “‘Forcible Rape’ Language Remains In Bill To Restrict Abortion Funding,” The Huffington Post, February 9, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206084&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=6

“Extreme Abortion Coverage Ban Introduced,” Center for American Progress, January 20, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205961&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=7

2. “Georgia State Lawmaker Seeks To Redefine Rape Victims As ‘Accusers,’” The Huffington Post, February 4, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206007&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=8

3. “South Dakota bill would legalize killing abortion doctors,” Salon, February 15, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206102&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=9

4. “House GOP Proposes Cuts to Scores of Sacred Cows,” National Journal, February 9, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206103&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=10

5. “New GOP Bill Would Allow Hospitals To Let Women Die Instead Of Having An Abortion,” Talking Points Memo, February 4, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205974&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=11

6. “Republican Officials Cut Head Start Funding, Saying Women Should be Married and Home with Kids,” Think Progress, February 16, 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/16/gop-women-kids/

7. “Bye Bye, Big Bird. Hello, E. Coli,” The New Republic, Feburary 12, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206104&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=12

8. “House GOP spending cuts will devastate women, families and economy,” The Hill, February 16, 2011
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/144585-house-gop-spending-cuts-will-devastate-women-families-and-economy-

9. “House passes measure stripping Planned Parenthood funding,” MSNBC, February 18,2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206122&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=13

“GOP Spending Plan: X-ing Out Title X Family Planning Funds,” Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206105&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=14

10. Ibid.

Birth Control for Horses, Not for Women,” Blog for Choice, February 17, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206106&id=26177-462163-sL0sBix&t=15

What I found frustrating is that the other person in the discussion was extremely forceful and aggressive in conversation. When she asked a question that was simple in its wording, but far-reaching in its implications, I would start to answer, and would immediately be attacked with another question. If you have political discussions on any sort of semi-regular basis, you’ve probably been in a similar situation.

I use the word attacked very specifically. Throughout this conversation, because I believe that people do have obligations to one another, that the social welfare state is actually a good model, and that (therefore) taxation (with representation) is legitimate; because my PhD research is funded by DARPA, my father was in the military, and I have connections to the military,  I was accused of being an advocate of violence. The word murderer even came up.

I’ve had discussions with people who straddle the line between libertarianism and anarchism in the past, and they have generally managed to be polite. We don’t yell at each other, and we don’t get in each others’ faces. We do interrupt each other at times, and certainly we’re condescending to each other, but we are not aggressive.

My point here is always be polite in political discussion. It’s difficult, but that’s what this blog is about– cases in which people lose their self-control, and debate breaks down into violence. The second point is that violence is not merely physical. Violence can be created with words just as easily as with fists. Calling someone a murderer and an advocate of violence is an act of violence in itself, especially when accompanied with volume and questions meant not to guide discussion, but to attack the beliefs of another.

I do not know if the person I was arguing with counts herself as a pacifist. I suspect she may, because of her emphasis on the invalidity of the use of force. If you are to call yourself a pacifist though, and object to the use of force, I believe you’re directly contravening your own principles when you make use of an aggressive style of argument.

My response to her aggressive style was not to yell back, or make accusations, or resort to personal attacks– I finally, frustrated with not being able to fully respond, said one word: “Hush”. This ended the conversation, as she refused to speak to me because I was disrespectful.

I respect her opinions, and upon some googling, I respect that she is involved in her local community in trying to make her ideas take form. I disagree with her, of course, but I’m not opposed to the idea that I could learn something from her approach. She completely shut down that possibility in discussion by her approach.

Political debate that turns aggressive and verbally violent only generates further animosity. Politics is about compromise; it’s about persuasion. It’s about finding the place where we agree, and figuring out what violations of our principles we can live with for the sake of living with other people. If you want to teach people, or help them understand why your way is better, you should never resort to verbal violence.

The first two articles address the estimate of frequency of guns being used in self-defense; the third addresses churchgoing numbers.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html

http://www.stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/103.myth0.pdf

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2006/07/counting_church.html

* The first article strengthens my position on this. I generally find the defense against home-invasion case uncompelling, or self-defense while strolling around the city. I do find it a more compelling argument for women, especially for women who frequently travel alone or live alone.  Women do, unfortunately, still face situations that men do not. Please note that I do not advocate blanket bans on firearms, or excessive restriction, but I am in favor of reasonable levels of regulation. I do not think that the self-defense argument forces a higher bar for justification of regulation.

Here’s what USAA wrote:

Dear Mr. Heckel:

Rarely in our 87-year history have we turned to USAA members to weigh in with elected representatives on an issue of great importance. But, we are now.

The U.S. Senate currently is considering legislation (S.3217) that would impose new rules on the nation’s financial services industry, including USAA.

As the leading provider of financial services to America’s military community, USAA supports financial services reform.

However, the current Senate bill would disproportionally impact USAA because we are a unique and fully integrated association. USAA is not like the banks and other companies that helped bring down our economy, and we never took a penny of TARP funds. We do not engage in the harmful practices this legislation seeks to resolve.

If unchanged, the bill would:

• Prevent USAA from managing the association’s portfolio as we have for the past 87 years.
• Jeopardize our ability to continue offering many of our competitive products.
• Limit our ability to return money to our members. Last year, USAA returned $1.2 billion to our members in the form of distributions, dividends, and bank rebates and rewards.*

So, we are asking all USAA members and employees to urge their U.S. senators to amend a portion of the bill, known as the “Volcker Rule,” to eliminate its effect on a company like USAA. Please know that this legislation does not impact individual member’s investments.

Regardless of the outcome of the legislation, USAA will remain a unique and enduring association that’s all about you — the military and their families.

Please take action on this matter by immediately contacting your U.S. senator. You may click here to access a special website that will enable you to quickly send an e-mail message to your senator.
Thank you for your help and support,
Joe Robles Signature
Josue (Joe) Robles Jr.
Major General, USA (Ret.)
President and CEO

Unfortunately, the detail mostly stopped there. I spent a good bit of time last night trying to understand what is going on with this, and, well, it wasn’t entirely clear. Still, in the end, I chose to go ahead and send a message on USAA’s behalf. Why?

First, what is USAA? The United Services Automobile Association started as an auto insurance company in 1922 by Army Officers who were having difficulty obtaining insurance. Not long thereafter, it opened membership to all services in the armed forces. It eventually branched out into other types of insurance, banking, and investments. Business was conducted entirely through mail for many years, and eventually moved to telephone service, then internet. USAA does not have any traditional bank branches or its own ATM machines; unlike your bank, however, this isn’t a problem. It doesn’t charge ATM fees to members, and it refunds fees charged by other banks. It received no TARP bailout money. USAA insurance premiums are quite low, and their investment returns are pretty good. When the new credit card rules went into place, USAA went a step further and– while late payment fees still exist– stopped increasing late payment interest rates. Profits from the insurance side of the business are returned to members quarterly. It is consistently rated as having the best customer service of any company in the United States. Seriously.

In short, USAA generally does everything right for their customers, and they’re certainly not doing anything shady with FDIC-insured deposits.

USAA is unique in the US, though (or nearly so– State Farm also would run afoul of the Volcker Rule). Because they provide a full array of financial services, this also means they can run into unique problems.  Specifically, the Volcker Rule would affect them because insurance premiums are invested into higher risk (but still not actively shady)/higher yield investments. So their insurance premiums would necessarily increase due to the fact that USAA has both banking and insurance arms.

Now, unfortunately, the email that USAA sent out was a bit light on the details. As such, they’re taking some flack for it: USAA’s anti-finreg campaign. This is not entirely undeserved– except for calling USAA anti-financial regulation– because while USAA did provide more information ( see http://tinyurl.com/32ny6r2 ), it’s still not quite enough. And honestly, when you search for information about the Volcker Rule, it’s hard to find a clear explanation of what’s going on with it.  So here’s my attempt to explain what the fuss is about:

The Volcker Rule aims to prevent FDIC-insured banks from risky investments, and the subtext seems to be that this would bring the investment arms of these banks into line– or encourage the banks to completely close up the investment shops attached to them. While the idea is perhaps good on its face, it seems way underspecified so that it hits places like USAA, and perhaps overly restricting in that it cuts off a lot of reasonable investment activity which, while riskier than government bonds, are still not shady financial products. And other things I’ve been reading have suggested that it wouldn’t actually do a whole lot of good, given that it wouldn’t apply to some of the major offenders, since they’re not depository banks. (The other things I’ve been reading: The Volcker rule ).

In addition, my friend Branen Salmon adds:

The impression I get is that this is a response to some depository banks investing FDIC-backed deposits in an attempt to make mad dollaz, thus hitting the FDIC hard when their risky investments hit the skids. It’s true that a lot of the major offenders of the recent mess were not depository banks (though a few were). Also, to the best of my understanding, USAA’s proprietary investments are performed solely with its insurance capital, not with its deposits, and I believe that several states exert tight regulation on insurance capital investments.

So that, as near as I can tell, is what the Volcker Rule does, and how it affects USAA. Based on all of this, as well as USAA’s strong customer service record and general competence, are the reason that I decided to support USAA’s campaign to have the Volcker Rule modified to prevent it from negatively impacting their business.

If I’ve gotten anything wrong here, please let me know. While I’m confident that this information is basically correct, I realize it is unlikely to be perfect– though at least it should be a more clear explanation of what’s going on with this issue.

I should note that while my knowledge of economics is, well, lacking, I found this pretty fantastic. Discovered through winged and finned.

These posts are a two part response to a Jonah Goldberg piece. Goldberg is a clown; he pointed to Swarthmore as a hotbed of liberal fascism a couple years ago, which, well… Sort of isn’t worth responding to. Anyway, Goldberg is, surprise, complaining that those taxes the liberals inflict are just awful and fascist and so forth. So the first post breaks down tax burden by GDP, and also by the different types of tax:

Jonah Goldberg, Quarter Slave (Conceptually)

The second article is more interesting, in my opinion. It looks at the GINI coefficient, which represents income distribution, and compares the US to other developed nations, both before and after taxes:

Jonah Goldberg, Anti-Maldistributionist

I found these articles pretty fascinating, and it provides something to think about as the tax deadline approaches.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/12/texas-education-board-cuts-thomas-jefferson-out-of-its-textbooks/

http://tfninsider.org/2010/03/13/the-list-of-shame-in-texas/

I want to come back to this, but I’ll have to pick just a few items to deal with, given the scale of the politically-motivated wrongness of all of these decisions. The changes covered include a whole range of massive historical revisions from the merely stupid to the utterly absurd. If you read through these and want any in particular covered, leave a comment, and I’ll pick a few to research in depth.

Given the last post, I feel I should note that the Andrew & Evan Gregory are both Swatties; Andrew hosted me for the invite-back weekend way back in 2001 when I confirmed that I had absolutely made the right choice in applying to Swarthmore Early Decision.

Okay, done? Good.

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him.

The author of this article is despairing over the failure of elite educational institutions to create the Ideal Citizen, instead creating the Self-Absorbed Entitled Citizen. In brief, the article itself is as out of touch as the behaviors it’s complaining about.

The opening complaint he tries to limit to his upper-class educational elite, as though it’s a specific problem to them. But just as the Ivy League graduate is unable to talk to the plumber, the plumber is unable to talk to the Ivy League graduate– it goes both ways. As likely as the Ivy Leaguer is to think of the plumber as being kinda dumb and not worth talking to, frequently the plumber thinks the Ivy Leaguer is just an ass and not worth talking to, and is just as convinced that he’s better because he’s not an intellectual elitist. There’s an inability to appreciate someone else’s values, or look beyond one’s own values, and it happens at every level. It happens at the public university I currently attend. It happens with guys in the IT world who don’t have a college degree.

The failure of character (credit to my sister for clarifying my ideas) isn’t a unique problem among his elite upper class folks, and thinking so is pretty masturbatory and out of touch in the first place. The author is trying to frame a problem as unique to the ivy league set (and, though he wants to exclude us for some reason, the Swarthmore/Amherst/Williams set*). I also get the sense that he’s nostalgic for a time that never existed, in which the elite colleges created a unique breed of graduates who were all as talented as Emerson, Woolf, Einstein, Jefferson, etc.

And the inertia of going for that high-paying business job or whatever hardly seems like a unique thing in itself– again, there’s a certain amount of inertia everywhere. Was it “easy” for me to go from college to graduate school? It was easy to make the decision to do so. It would’ve been a lot harder if I had been raised the son of a local HVAC sales & repairman who expected me to help him out and join the family business. Or the child of a family living close to the poverty line whose family expected short-term financial assistance. Or if I had been feeling pressure from my sisters and my mother to go to law school. College can help show the available options, but, in the end, there’s a lot of pressure to do what’s expected from many different sources.

Maybe some of this does look worse right now, because of some definite increased political polarization. Certainly I think there’s a problem in that people fail to assign basic respect and dignity to others outside their preferred identity and value system, but it’s not a problem that can be unilaterally solved by Yale teaching its students how to have a friendly conversation with the cleaning staff. If the student hasn’t figured that out by the time he’s reached college, there’s a deeper failure in society and education.

*Note that I do believe liberal arts colleges do deserve some additional credit, and I am a firm believer in the value of a liberal arts education. Colleges like my alma mater do provide that added value; while I don’t think that the art of critical thinking is something that should be taught only starting at the college level (here I would like to extol the educational genius of one of my high school teachers, Mr. John Reimers, a man who terrorizes all the students of Woodberry Forest, yet has shaped the minds of so many of its alumni), I do think that Swarthmore does a good job to provide continuing education in it. I don’t even believe this is necessarily rare, except insofar as excellent instructors who teach students how to learn on their own are rare.

Edit: It occurs to me I have plenty more to say about some items in this article. One in particular is the issue of grade inflation– the top schools are finally acknowledging the problem, at least, but it is a problem. It’s a problem that particularly bothers me, because my experience recently has been that frequently universities won’t just allow grade inflation, but practically require it as they attempt to build enrollment. Courses get watered down, and the quality of graduates drop. This is the Wrong Way to build a school and its reputation. I will admit, though, that it’s a different problem than at the upper tier schools, where the issue is retention numbers and (I have to assume) alumni contributions which could be affected if young Legacy Jr. fails out or has a rough time at school.

I’ve been wondering for a long time how to go about fixing the educational system generally, and as I think about it more, I’m more certain it’s not that the real problems are hard to identify. The difficulty is that the real problems are one that nobody, not parents, not teachers, not administrators, have any strong will to fix.