Category Archives: Politics

Blue Meanies Attack in Massachusetts

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Okay, this might seem contradictory, since I’ve blogged about how horrified I am that parents don’t feed their kids more nutritious food.

But banning fluffernutter sandwiches????

First of all, the “nutter” part of the sandwich is peanut butter, which is a source of protein, B vitamins, calcium, and Vitamin E. Granted, the fluff is empty calories, but how is it any worse than jelly?

Put the thing on whole wheat bread, sure. But ban it?

How is a fluffernutter sandwich any worse than the other crap they hand out from school cafeterias? Mac and cheese (white macaroni glopped with processed cheese food stuff)? Chicken finger (breaded deep fried chicken scraps)? “Pizza pockets” ( more white bread with a bit of ketchup and five molecules of cheese inside)?

I swear, they must hand out stupid pills to legislators right after election night.

This is also a terrific example of why you can’t rely on government to sort out issues that require focused, case-by-case, parental decisions. Sometimes you have to sugar things a bit to get kids to eat them. I dress up cooked carrots with sugar sometimes, to get my daughter to eat them. I use sweetened salad dressings to make green salads appeal to her.

I also favor keeping soda vending machines out of schools (especially at the grade school level). There’s no redeeming value to soda, except as an occasional treat.

But banning fluffernutter — that’s just silly. Do-good idiocy run amuck.

There’s spending, and then there’s spending

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I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough about the Monroe County budget to speak to whether there’s any fat that could be trimmed. But when it comes to the national budget, clearly some spending decisions are driven by politicians’ craven attempts to score easy points with their constituents, regardless of whether that spending is good for the nation as a whole. That’s why it’s nice to see that pressure on Congress to reduce porkbarrel spending seems to be working. According to figures published by blogger N.Z. Bear, FY ’07 earmark requests are down 37 percent.

That is very good news.

Locally, perhaps the answer is something along the lines of what Michael Caputo suggests in one of his recent series of stories on the proposed county sales tax hike:

The dire choices presented by Brooks had she opted to cut services. She told the assembled in the County Office Building last Thursday that to cut the programs necessary to balance the books would have been… well, draconian. She talked about ending the road patrol service. She talked about closing the zoo… closing the parks . . .

This is as if she couldn’t scale back on some or all of these programs. Why end them? Why give us the all or nothing scenario? That is, of course, about making a point using drastic means.

Whatever the specific answer, the real takeaway is that if the politicians know people are paying attention, their behavior changes. We have to show them we expect them to act responsibly — that we haven’t forgotten it’s our money they’re spending.

Think about this, the next time a local pol wants to build a parking garage that’s only supposed to last 30 years.

Neigh!

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Was actually three horsemen that rumbled through Rochester, New York, this week. Death (Robert Wegman), Destruction (collapsing parking garage) and Taxes.

I’ve blogged about the first two already. Here’s the third: County Exec Maggie Brooks has proposed a tax increase.

Here’s her op-ed in yesterday’s paper, in which she sets up a straw man (raising property tax) and hails higher sales taxes as the lesser evil.

And here’s today’s Democrat and Chronicle piece — a survey of reactions to the proposed hike from the ‘burbs. An excerpt:

“It will increase the cost of doing the business — and we’re scared of losing business,” said Mike Terrigino, 46, owner of NapaGino’s restaurant at Penn Fair Plaza in Penfield.

About two-thirds of the additional $73 million raised would come from consumers in their daily purchases of everything from meals at a restaurant to appliances for their homes, county officials say. The remainder would be paid by businesses, in the form of a sales tax on such items as office supplies and gasoline to make deliveries.

With customers already watching their spending, Terrigino worries that some might buy less or dine out less often as a result of a sales tax hike.

His expenses will also go up. Terrigino pays a sales tax on everything from take-out containers and napkins to materials for cleaning. As it is, he pays about $300 a month in sales tax on such items.

Michael Caputo has been blogging extensively about this move. Keep scrolling. Here he’s posted a comparison of how much Rochester gets back from the state sales tax pot (more, per capita, than other New York cities).

Here, he’s got some more interesting factoids — including that New York State”has one of the highest combined state/local sales tax rates in the U.S.”

Personally, I don’t see how raising taxes — any taxes — helps our community. OTOH, we’re enmeshed in such a messy situation at the state level that our options truly are limited.

Where the money goes

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Here’s the other piece of the tax facts puzzle (courtesy The Heritage Foundation).

Washington will spend $23,760 per household in 2006 — the highest inflation-adjusted total since World War II, and $6,500 more than in 2001. The federal government will collect $20,044 per household in taxes. The remaining $3,716 represents this year’s budget deficit per household, which, along with all prior government debt, will be dumped in the laps of our children.

The article then gives a breakdown of that $23,760 per-household spend.

Tax facts

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From Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

* The standard income tax code is now estimated to be 60,000 pages;
* Last year, 60 percent of filers hired professional preparers;
* Psychiatrists “are trying to get ‘fear of tax filing’ designated as an official medical disability;”
* The Tax Foundation estimates that tax compliance costs the US economy $250 billion annually.

In the comments a couple of days ago, the John Earle left a link to Americans for Fair Taxation, an organization that advocates a consumption tax. I find the idea intriguing, but it seems almost too radical (it would require the repeal of the 16th Amendment, for instance, and predicting its effects on spending and tax revenues strikes me as well-nigh impossible to do). I also have questions about the logistics. For instance, a proposed rebate would serve as a way to exempt people below the poverty line from paying the tax. It would seem to me that proving you qualify for this would require some significant paperwork. Can we really expect our poorest citizens to cope with that? Certainly we’d have to put a huge bureaucracy in place to manage that facet of the scheme alone . . .

The Journal editorial proposes that we modify the Alternative Minimum Tax and use that as a kind of flat tax. Perhaps that would work.

We definitely need to do something. I’d heartily support any politician who showed some leadership on this issue . . . well, almost any politician, LOL

[tags] income tax, consumption tax, flat tax [/tags]

“America is a Lockean nation through and through.”

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A wonderfully lucid look at America — and why other countries don’t always understand America — by Jonathan Walmsley at The Philosophers’ Magazine Online.

Walmsley argues that many people interpret American foreign policy in terms of Hobbe’s view of nature (or more often, a caricature of his view of nature) while Americans tend to view our actions according to Locke’s view of nature.

The article is well worth the time to read in full. Here’s a taste:

America’s Lockean outlook is perhaps most apparent in foreign affairs. America sees itself as a benign actor on a moral stage — acting in its own interests to be sure, but viewing its interests as exemplifying the universal values that it embodies as a nation. Moreover, in acting in its own interest, America sees itself as rule-bound and gentlemanly. There is, therefore, no necessity to be obedient to any authority — actions do not require the approval of an authority to be legitimate. Equally, any agreement freely entered into can be left freely and with equanimity. Should it no longer suit the United States to be bound by some international agreement, they have every right to leave it.

The funniest thing for Lockeans is to realize there might be another way to look at it.

The nations of Europe, for example, after a century of devastating conflict, well understand that left by themselves, nations are unruly entities capable of wreaking unrestrained destruction. Said nations are therefore conscious of the over-riding need to have each nation submit to a higher authority. In a fit of post-war sobriety, the nations of Europe volunteered to tie their own hands, that they might not injure themselves through hurting others.

We do need to understand each other better. This article maybe gives a few clues as to how to begin.

Reality Check

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As I’ve written previously, I suspect people think they know more about so-called objective reality than they really do know. One manifestation of this is what we sometimes term a “conspiracy theory:” a mind, scanning the sensory landscape into which it is submerged, tags certain data elements as significant and overlays a system of causal relationships. The causality is always arguably plausible, and the theory appears to enable the person to successfully predict future events.

The plausibility and predictive utility of the theory are awfully seductive, of course, so it’s easy to recruit believers, who refine the theory and contribute new data points that they’ve observed. Soon, the theory takes on a life of its own.

This can be amusing and cute, as in the “Paul is dead” theories of the Beatles era.

Yet peoples’ conspiracy theories often disturb us as well. They unsettle us, because they can’t be dislodged by arguing “facts.” I can guarantee that you couldn’t persuade this guy, for instance, that the cloud formations he photographs have a benign explanation. He’d bury you. He’s a frickin’ meteorologist. He’s devoted his life to mustering facts that support his theories.

What’s more, conspiracy theories have a way of galvanizing people into “inspired action” — it gives them the added motivation of believing that their actions are in the service of something greater than themselves. So we read in the first piece I linked (by Massimo Polidoro, on the website of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal):

What is sadly true is the fact that Charles Manson and his “family” also believed that there were hidden messages in Beatles songs hinting at the Armageddon. He thought that the Fab Four were actually angels sent by God to reveal the secrets of the approaching apocalypse and that, in order to start the end of the world, they needed Manson’s help. This is the tragically absurd reasoning he gave for the murder of Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski, and the guests she was hosting at their house in Hollywood.

I’m not a relativist. I believe there are absolutes out there, dangling from the firmament like the brightest of stars. But look at how we muddy them from our earthbound perspective.

And when I say “we,” I don’t just mean the “crazies.” All of us do it. Political beliefs, for instance, are more like, than unlike, conspiracy theories. Supported by selective data points that are linked together into causal relationships, rendered seductive by plausibility and predictive utility.

We need to find better ways to measure what we accept as true.

It’s not who you know, but how little

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The problem is, we may not know how little we know.

So claims Yale University psychology professor Frank Keil in this article. Keil has conducted research on the disconnect between what people think they know compared to what they actually do know.

We are good at estimating how well we know simple facts (such as the capitals of countries), procedures (such as how to make an international phone call), and narratives (such as the plots of well-known movies). But we seem to have a specific “illusion of explanatory depth” — the belief that we possess a more profound causal [emphasis mine] understanding than we really do. We can be appropriately modest about our knowledge of other things, but not so about our ability to explain the workings of the world.

This is particularly pronounced, Keil says, when the object of our faux understanding is a relatively complex object or system. Because complex systems are “richly hierarchical,” he explains, “they can be understood at several levels of analysis.” Unfortunately, we tend to confound a high-level understanding with a comprehensive understanding.

One can understand how a computer “works”  in terms of the high-level functions of the mouse, the hard drive, and the display while not having any understanding of the mechanisms that enable a cursor to move when a mouse is moved, or allow information to be stored and erased, or control pixels on a screen.

Yet once we’re able to explain how to save a file, or log onto the Internet, or defrag a harddrive, we slip into the illusion of believing we understand our computers.

We’re also vulnerable to this illusion, Keil continues, when the parts of the system are visible. “The more parts you can see, the more you think you know how those parts actually work.”

Keil’s piece confines itself to a discussion of physical phenomena, but it strikes me that the same can be said of our understanding of events–historical and current. Surf the ‘net tonight, for instance, and you’ll find as many theories about what’s going on in Iraq right now as you have time to read. People are writing about who was behind the bombing of the Golden Mosque, what their motivations were, and whether this represents civil war or not. Many of these explanations are delivered with supreme confidence.

But in every case, we have individuals who are working with the highly visible parts of a very complex phenomenon.

So, if Keil is right, the aforementioned confidence is actually supreme overconfidence. It’s not understanding; it’s the illusion of understanding.

Almost no one really understands what’s happening–the exception being the people who actually masterminded the bombing.

The same goes for every major event, from Bush’s deal to hand over commercial port operations to Dubai to — well, fill in the blank: _________________________.

We deceive ourselves when we assume that knowing what the pieces are, and how they fit together, is enough to proclaim causality.

And by the way, maybe the political divide in this country wouldn’t be so harsh if we all acknowledged this, eh?

Upstate, Downstate

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Zubalove, in a post about NY State politics, references one of the state’s archetypes: the perennial rivalry for money and political power between New York City and “Upstate.”

(Upstate, for anyone who has never been here, is about as different from NY City as you could imagine: a patchwork of New Englandish, rural communities, woodlands [some quite extensive], dairy farms, and small-to-medium cities, most of which are a bit tattered around the edges.)

Zuba writes:

The increasing chasm between the economy of a world-class metropolitan area and the milder and volatile rust belt characteristics of upstate becomes more and more difficult to negotiate every year. This regional problem transcends political party, because neither group seems incredibly willing to stand up and make the necessary changes to the financial barriers of this state. As long as downstate hums along, it doesn’t faze any of the leaders in Albany that the cost of doing business in this state is astronomical and the tax rate is oppressive.

It’s the tyranny of the majority: Upstate is more sparsely populated than our state’s famous namesake city, therefore, our priorities tend to be backburnered. Sure, the politicians pass through to garner swing votes during election season (in 1999, the Clintons famously chose Skaneatales for a summer vacation, in large part to help soften the Upstate turf for Hillary’s upcoming Senate run). But we live in a very large shadow, and short of breaking the state in two, we always will.

Zuba suggests that we can adjust the balance of power by breaking up the status quo of our state government, and mentions a new book by Jay Gallagher, Gannett News Service’s Albany bureau chief, cheerfully titled “The Politics of Decline.”

It will be interesting to see what Gallagher prescribes — and whether anybody pays any attention.

Why this “divide” matters

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Prospect magazine has a piece online by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad exploring the “divide” between western and eastern philosophy.

A little over half-way in, Ram-Prasad touches on the political implications of western vs. eastern conceptions of the self:

The east/west divide on the self extends to political individualism. In different ways, both the major eastern traditions conceive of the individual in very particular terms. The responsibilities, entitlements and authority of individuals depend on their specific natures: people are not interchangeable in their rights and duties. If asked whether an individual either can or should do something, the classical Chinese or Indian would answer that it depended on that particular person’s nature. X might be heard in the royal court on account of his birth, personality and status, while Y, in the same official position, would not be accorded the same power.

This contrasts with the western idea of the self, which Ram-Prasad characterizes as “generic” individualism:

Under this notion, individuals are interchangeable; it does not matter who one is in biographical and psychologically specific terms. It is the general idea of the individual that is important, not the particularities of specific people. The rule of law, the formality of political institutions and the claim to universal rights have flown from this paradoxical idea of generic individualism, in which each person is equally like every other.

(Well, not “equally like,” perhaps, but accorded a uniform measure of minimum political power.)

In both classical Chinese and Indian thought, there is a contrasting “microindividualism”: each individual in a sociopolitical collective has specific burdens and freedoms. In China, this led to an organic communitarianism in which each individual, by doing exactly what was specific to themselves, contributed in his or her own special way to a larger entity — the Middle Kingdom. The particularity of each individual was significant to the extent they contributed to the polity as a whole, and therefore each individual was insignificant apart from that whole. In different ways, Confucian and Daoist thinkers subscribed to this idea, and it may help to explain why economic success has not prompted major demands for democracy in modern China. In India, this microindividualism, based on dharma — the nature and duty of each persona — was supposed to lead to a social order in which there was clear differentiation of labour and functional expertise. The actual result was an explosion of multiple values evident in Indian democracy today. The implication in Indian and Chinese thought is of an infinite diversity of individualisms, a situation which generates many problems of equality and universality, but also suggests possibilities for political theories on how to live with fundamental difference.

Ram-Prasad doesn’t elaborate on those “possibilities for political theories.” I wish he had. As we plunge toward our common global destiny, Westerners need to have realistic expections for how our political values will be integrated — or not — into non-Western political systems. Otherwise, all we have is cliche. And misunderstanding, which is even worse.