Our Past and Our Principles

Today was a slow news day, so the Washington Post decided to publish an editorial criticizing the addition of a bust of Joseph Stalin to the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.

I have a couple of problems with the Post's analysis. First, there's this minor historical misrepresentation:

Not long ago, they [Bedford] installed a bronzed bust of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to accompany those of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. They did so despite public protests, the memorial's serious financial problems and the possibly pertinent fact that Stalin played no direct role in the D-Day landings.

While the Post is technically correct, it glosses over the fact that the Allies wouldn't have even had the opportunity for a D-Day strike had it not been for the heroic performance of the Red Army in fighting the German forces to a standstill on the Eastern Front. This success wasn't entirely Stalin's doing, but historians generally recognize that his steadfast, and often ruthless, leadership played a part in sustaining the morale and vigor of the Soviet armed forces and citizenry during this harrowing time.

More importantly, however, it's worth noting that the good/evil dichotomy that Stalin exhibited is hardly a unique facet of his character. In Stalin's case, the contradiction between the two is particularly striking--after all, this was a man who led his country to a remarkable victory in WWII and also presided over a stunning economic transition during the early years of his rule, yet whose hubris and paranoia made him personally responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. But it's a curious fact of American life that we casually overlook the dark sides of many historical individuals and organizations that have become accepted and even honored parts of our nation's public life. Sometimes, this uncomfortable reality manifests itself in tiny things--for example, the mascot of my middle school was the Crusaders, named after a group of individuals who engaged in slaughter and rape during the Middle Ages. Other times, though, the incongruity between our heroes and our values is huge, such as when we declare a federal holiday in honor of genocidal conqueror Christopher Columbus, who is responsible for the deaths of millions of natives in the Western Hemisphere (a feat that, when ranked on a per-capita basis with global population taken into account, ranks up there with Stalin's mass murder).

My point isn't that Stalin should be included on the D-Day Memorial--I'd lean toward saying that he should be excluded simply because that seems to be the will of the veterans to whom the memorial ultimately belongs. But before major newspapers publish 500-word rants that look at issues such as this in isolation, it might do some good to consider America's broader inability to reconcile its historical pride with its vaunted principles.

Private Sector Dysfunction

Matt Yglesias wrote an interesting post today detailing a recent experience that he had with private sector dysfunction:

For a while, I had a Verizon wireless broadband device. A few months ago, I decided I didn’t need it any more and called them up to cancel. I was expecting some phone company hell for my trouble, but it actually went fine. Until, that is, I got my next bill from them. What’s especially odd about it is that it’s a bill for zero dollars and zero cents. In other words, they know I don’t owe them money, but they’re billing me anyway. And now it happens every month. And it’s hard to know how to get out of this situation, because I don’t have a Verizon Wireless phone number or account number anymore thanks to the fact that I don’t have an account with them and don’t owe them any money.

Yglesias correctly points out that this sort of incompetence from a public sector agency would garner round condemnation from Americans who are fed up with "fraud, waste, and abuse" in government. Yet these same individuals would never consider using an isolated inconvenience caused by a private company to justify their wholesale loss of faith in capitalism.

As it so happens, I've been bemused by this inconsistency ever since an incident that occurred during an interaction that I had with the very same company, Verizon, that Yglesias mentions. The last time I went to buy a new phone, I was unable to transfer my contacts and personal settings from my old phone's SIM card to my new phone because the Verizon store did not have the necessary machine. Apparently, it had been taken across town to another Verizon store. Now, this didn't cause me any huge problems, but it is comparable to, say, the DMV's camera being broken. The latter case would add to the mystique of the DMV as the ultimate example of bureaucratic ineptitude, yet I doubt the former led anyone in the store that day to forswear ever patronizing a private phone company again.

The obvious retort is that private sector competition should eventually root out incompetence by firms such as Verizon, since consumers will abandon them and move on to companies that are more efficient and responsive. Yet Verizon Wireless remains the largest cell phone carrier in the United States.

None of this is to say that isolated incidents such as the ones that Yglesias and I experienced should totally blacken the reputation of companies like Verizon, but neither should isolated incidents of welfare fraud and long waits at the DMV discredit the entirety of the public sector.

The Living-Wage Movement

Progressivism is a philosophy that has bred many great ideas about how to structure our society and government, but it is not infallible. Thus, I wrote this article about the misguided nature of the living-wage movement, which is a typically well-intentioned initiative that nonetheless is seeking a wholly implausible solution to poverty. Let me know what you think.

America Wants A Free Lunch

A friend of mine was commenting on my last post about the Gulf oil spill when he noted that public support for climate legislation is very high. This statement obviously piqued my interest since support for such legislation in Congress is tenuous at best.

So I did some research about how the American public feels about climate change, clean energy, and political action to deal with these issues. What I found has left me even more disappointed in the present state of the American electorate.

This recent survey done by The New York Times and CBS News seems promising on the surface. After all, 76 percent of respondents said they favored increased regulation of offshore oil drilling and a stunning 89 percent believed that U.S. energy policy either needs fundamental changes or needs to be completely restructured. Furthermore, 59 percent believed that it was very or somewhat likely that the U.S. would develop a major source of energy other than oil within the next 25 years.

Yet this poll also shows that the American public is completely unwilling to take the necessary steps to remake the nation's energy policy and encourage the development of alternative sources of energy. 51 percent oppose the general idea of raising the gasoline tax to fund renewable energy R&D; an even stronger majority of 65 percent said they would oppose that option if it raised the price of gas by $1.00. Essentially, the American people want a free lunch--a clean, cheap source of energy that will magically appear and make oil obsolete.

In terms of the specific climate legislation in Congress, the situation is hardly better. This 2009 poll by ABC News and The Washington Post shows that while 72 percent of Americans still believe the earth is warming, only 53 percent believe that we should use a cap and trade system to cut down on carbon emissions. Once again, a significant majority of Americans seems to recognize that a major problem is occurring and yet remains opposed to any solution that might require some personal sacrifice.

Another factor that contributes to this cognitive dissonance among Americans is, of course, the wild misinformation that has polluted the debate about climate change legislation. Most Americans actually wouldn't see their livelihoods seriously impacted by a cap and trade program, but because they've been convinced that they would they oppose it anyway. Sounds a bit like health care, doesn't it?

Kudos to Clooney

I forgot to post this last week when it occurred to me, but George Clooney is truly one of the greatest actors of all time. This may seem obvious to some who have followed his long career, but I only fully understood it for the first time while watching a 2009 movie of his called The Men Who Stare At Goats.

The movie is essentially a semi-true account of a small town reporter's investigation of the U.S. Army's attempt to use physic powers in warfare. Overall, it was a rather mediocre affair--the plot was fairly incoherent and the back story of the protagonist, played by Ewan McGregor, was hardly compelling. Yet Clooney performed brilliantly as an erratic and mysterious former U.S. psychic soldier who leads McGregor's character into Iraq during the early stages of the American invasion in order to complete a secret mission. While the plot swirled about haphazardly and the other characters remained sadly one-dimensional, Clooney kept me interested with entertaining dialogue and irresistible intensity. I realized that his ability to make a film worth watching despite its overall weakness is the hallmark of an exceptional actor.

Then I got to thinking about the remarkable variety of roles that Clooney has played throughout the years. Clooney performed as Dr. Doug Ross on the TV series ER during the late 90s; as a star-crossed skipper in The Perfect Storm; a slick criminal in the Oceans Trilogy; a sober CIA operative in Syriana; a charming lunatic in Burn After Reading, and a suave yet lonely corporate downsizer in Up In The Air. He also gave an award-winning performance in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a film that I have yet to see.

Add to that résumé his role as the director of Good Night, and Good Luck, and Clooney has undoubtedly been one of the most tremendous film talents of not only his generation, but of the entire history of cinema.

Liberalism's Discontent

Ross Douthat has a very perceptive column in today's New York Times about the growing liberal angst that is being directed toward Barack Obama. He identifies three reasons for this discontent:

At work in this liberal panic are two intellectual vices, and one legitimate fear. The first vice is the worship of presidential power: the belief that any problem, any crisis, can be swiftly solved by a strong government, and particularly a strong executive. A gushing oil well, a recalcitrant Congress, a public that’s grown weary of grand ambitions — all of these challenges could be mastered, Obama’s leftward critics seem to imagine, if only he were bolder or angrier, or maybe just more determined....

The second vice is an overweening faith in theory. It’s now conventional wisdom among Obama’s liberal critics that the White House has been insufficiently ambitious about deficit spending. The economy is stuck in neutral, they argue, because Obama didn’t push last year’s recovery act up over a trillion dollars, and hasn’t pressed hard enough for a second major stimulus....

But it’s here, with the looming fiscal crisis, that the more legitimate liberal fear comes in. Liberals had hoped that Obama’s election marked the beginning of a long progressive era — a new New Deal, a greater Great Society. Instead, from the West Coast to Western Europe, the welfare state is in crisis everywhere they look. The future suddenly seems to belong to austerity and retrenchment — and even, perhaps, to conservatism.

Although I essentially agree with Douthat on these points, I think he misses an equally important fourth reason for liberals' increasingly critical take on the Obama presidency: the contemporary conservative movement is no longer worth taking seriously. Liberals have thus turned their attention toward improving their own movement since the utter lack of intellectual vigor and principled argument from the opposing side had made it an impossible ideology with which to debate. At this point, the liberal movement feels that there is more to be gained by critiquing a president who shares their basic ideological convictions than by arguing with an opposing movement that considers all major liberal initiatives to be "socialist" and that incessantly spouts outrageous inconsistencies about the deficit, climate change, and national security.

We're All Tony Hayward

The latest in BP's long line of PR gaffes since the start of the Gulf oil spill comes courtesy of, who else, their chief executive Tony Hayward, who apparently took a vacation from the spill zone today by watching one of his yachts compete in a race in England.

This is obviously galling to the average American for a couple of reasons. First, it seems outrageous that an individual as utterly irresponsible and incompetent as Hayward can live a lifestyle so much more luxurious than any that we will come close to experiencing. Also, it is utterly inappropriate for Hayward to be taking a break from the spill to indulge in his chosen lifestyle while hundreds of thousands of individuals along the Gulf Coast are trapped in a situation that has made their traditional lifestyles impossible.

Yet as wrong as Hayward may be to watch yachts race while oil gushes into the Gulf, most Americans are just like him. By that I mean we are continuing to live our typical lifestyles without any regard for how we are complicit in the worst environmental disaster in American history.

I know this because when I filled up my gas tank today, the station around me was packed. We were all there to get a product that is obtained through highly risky methods that can lead to epic disasters such as the Gulf spill, but no one seemed particularly concerned about that today. Rather, we were just trying to fill up so that we could get to graduation parties, river houses, grocery stores, or wherever else our carefree Saturday routines took us. No one was picketing the gas station with signs demanding that Congress pass legislation to put a price on carbon, and people obviously hadn't stayed home in protest of our dependence on such a dirty source of energy. Sure, none of us filling our tanks were CEO of the company at fault for the Gulf spill, but we were all citizens of the nation that is ultimately responsible for the catastrophe. Until we can muster the strength to alter our own comfortable routines, how can we possibly criticize Tony Hayward for his reluctance to do the same?

Value Judgment

Today's Washington Post column by Colbert King is truly excellent and worth reading in full. His discussion of the checkered family histories of several conservative icons really highlights the hypocrisy that these individuals display when they criticize liberals for opposing traditional "family values." Take Rush Limbaugh, for example:

Limbaugh, who dropped out of college after one year, married his first wife, a sales secretary, in September 1977. She filed for divorce three years later; it was granted in July 1980. Limbaugh next married an usherette in 1983; they divorced in 1990. In May 1994, he married an aerobics instructor he met online. They separated in June 2004 and divorced that December.

Two weeks ago, Limbaugh married a Florida party planner. He's still wedded to her as far as I can tell.

This sort of lifestyle is despicable by any objective measure, but the fact that Limbaugh portrays himself as a social crusader makes it even more appalling.

Newt Gingrich is also guilty of philandering and hypocrisy:

Gingrich is one nuptial behind Limbaugh. But he started earlier. In 1962, at age 19, Gingrich married his 26-year-old former high school geometry teacher. Gingrich left her in the spring of 1980. He did return to see her at the hospital where she was getting treatment for cancer. He was there to discuss divorce terms. Formally divorced in 1981, Gingrich remarried six months later.

That marriage lasted until 2000. By his own admission, Gingrich started an affair with a woman 23 years his junior during his second marriage. It was around the time he was taking Bill Clinton to task over Monica Lewinsky.

Gingrich's second marriage ended in 2000, and he married his girlfriend the same year. The current Mrs. Gingrich is still with him, as far as I can tell.

Not only does this behavior make a mockery of the "family values" mantra, but it also destroys any credibility that conservatives may claim to have when lambasting low-income individuals--particularly those who are minorities--for engaging in what they believe are outrageously promiscuous and irresponsible lifestyles unlike those of mainstream Americans. As Limbaugh and Gingrich demonstrate, however, promiscuity and irresponsibility are traits that are much more deeply ingrained in American society. Hence, it's wrong to heap punishment upon the lower classes for their perceived indulgence in such behaviors when, in fact, we're all guilty of them to a large extent.

That being said, I think King's criticism of Sarah Palin toward the end of the column is somewhat off-target:

The same Palin who last week said of President Obama, "It sounds like the inner circle that he has are some Chicago thugs." Well, Palin knows lawbreaking, too.

Her sister-in-law, Diana Palin, half sister of the former governor's husband, got a 15-month sentence this year. Burglarizing the same Alaska house three times for money to satisfy a drug habit is the kind of thing that can get you arrested. Thuggery? How about Sherry Johnston, the mother of Levi Johnston, the high school dropout who fathered Palin's grandson? She was arrested and charged with selling drugs; after pleading guilty to one count with intent to deliver the drug OxyContin she was sentenced to three years.

Because of her medical condition, the woman who was once Bristol Palin's future mother-in-law was released from prison to home confinement, where she wears an ankle-monitoring device.

Just as Palin's criticism of Obama's inner circle was improper, it's wrong to pin upon her the crimes of her sister-in-law and the mother of her daughter's ex-boyfriend. Palin exercises absolutely no control over these individuals, and she's probably as appalled by their behavior as any of the rest of us. This is the rare case where I have to stick up for Sarah Palin, but those examples that King cites tell us very little about her actual character.

Sticky Situation

Ahead of President Obama's primetime address from the Oval Office tonight, it's worth considering what he hopes to accomplish from the speech. Obviously, goal number one is to convince the American public that his administration is on top of the situation in the Gulf of Mexico. But beyond that, will he try to set the stage for broader legislative action to address the twin problems of climate change and America's reliance on fossil fuels?

If he does attempt this, I don't have very high hopes that he will succeed. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling shows that 77 percent of Lousianans still support offshore oil drilling and that only 31 percent have become less supportive as a result of the spill.

There are many signs of irrationality and stubbornness among the nation's citizenry today, but few stick out as much as this. If the most acutely impacted victims (other than wildlife) of a disaster on the scale of the BP spill remain completely unconvinced of any need for future policy changes to make such catastrophes less likely, then what hope does President Obama have of convincing the rest of the nation that comprehensive climate and energy legislation is necessary?

Getting Schooled

Today's Wall Street Journal has a fascinating piece about how schools struggling to cope with significant state and local budget cuts are turning to private businesses and churches for supplementary funding.

There are two ways to look at this: One perspective would hold that this is a brilliant way to keep schools afloat in tough economic times since securing funding through private donations is much less coercive than raising taxes. Furthermore, there are exciting possibilities for public-private partnerships that could endow students with unique opportunities to gain knowledge and skills in specific fields: For example, the opening of a Tennessee Credit Union branch in a Nashville high school that will be operated entirely by students and school staff seems promising.

Upon closer examination, however, private funding of public schools has a number of dangerous consequences. For one thing, the Wall Street Journal article makes it very clear that the churches involved in helping public schools aren't merely doing it for philanthropic purposes:

When his budget for pencils, paper, and other essential supplies was cut by a third this school year, the principal of Combee Elementary School worried children would suffer.

Then, a local church stepped in and "adopted" the school. The First Baptist Church at the Mall stocked a resource room with $5,000 worth of supplies. It now caters spaghetti dinners at evening school events, buys sneakers for poor students, and sends in math and English tutors.

The principal is delighted. So are church pastors. "We have inroads into public schools that we had not had before," says Pastor Dave McClamma. "By befriending the students, we have the opportunity to visit homes to talk to parents about Jesus Christ."

And later in the article:

Mr. McClamma says adopting Combee goes far beyond providing resources like school supplies. "The purpose is to show them the church cares, and that there is hope, and hope is found in Jesus Christ."

"If they want to come in and help, who am I to say no?" says Mr. Comparato, the principal.

He says he would welcome congregations of any faith as sponsors, but adds of his students, "My personal conviction is that I hope through this they'll know Jesus and they'll get saved."

This is all well and good, but what happens if the church finds that students and their families are less than receptive to their particular religious message? My hunch is that the funding will probably be diverted toward a school that is more "Christian-friendly."

And it's not just churches that have their own agenda to promote by donating to schools:

At Sikes Elementary, principal Ann Tankson hands out fliers urging families to flock to "McTeacher's Night" at the local McDonald's, where volunteer teachers flip burgers as "celebrity employees." The franchise gives a portion of proceeds to the school.

"You do what you have to do," she says.

So America has apparently regressed to the point where obtaining a healthy education relies upon patronizing a business that sells the most unhealthy food that mankind has ever created.

Perhaps the most serious drawback to this approach, however, is that it amplifies the already-severe inequality that exists in the nation's public school system. For kids in the wealthy suburbs of America's major cities, private donations may be readily available from a plethora of local businesses and wealthy parents. Supplemental private funds will be much harder to come by for kids in urban school districts, however. In those areas, fewer local businesses and private holders of wealth exist to contribute to the funding of schools. Additionally, there is the fact that businesses looking to build up their customer bases by establishing connections with public schools would have a much harder time doing so in impoverished urban neighborhoods (there probably isn't much of a market for tooth-whitening services in East Harlem).

There are, of course, people who would argue as Ann Tankson does that "you do what you have to do" when it comes to funding schools. But many of those people would probably turn around and raise hell about tax increases that would make for a more equitable solution to the school funding problem.

Charter Cities

One of the longest running and most puzzling questions of economics is how best to foster growth and improved living standards in woebegone regions of the globe such as sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. Stanford economist Paul Romer, who is renowned for his work on modern growth theory, has recently developed what he believes to be a promising new approach to this problem: charter cities.

Essentially, these would be urban areas that would be created in undeveloped nations and administered not by those nations' governments but rather by the governments of successful Western nations. If this sounds rather neo-colonial, it is. Romer repeatedly cites the British experience in Hong Kong as a model for this approach, and predicts that the outcomes will be similar to what has happened in China over the past two decades. Upon witnessing the prosperity and growth of these charter cities, the national governments of underdeveloped nations will be compelled to experiment with other special economic zones just as China did in response to the success of Hong Kong's liberal economic and political structures. Over time, this will lead to the liberalization of the entire nation as more citizens and policymakers realize the obvious gains to be had from such an approach.

This sounds like a great idea in theory, but I am skeptical that it could work in practice. The most pressing problem would, of course, be finding Western countries to administer the charter cities. Without the promise of economic gain for themselves, it's hard to imagine the US, France, or even Sweden lining up to take on the challenge of developing and governing urban areas in alien lands that are, in many cases, hundreds of years behind the Western world.

But even if there were nations willing to take control of charter cities, I have my doubts about whether they would be able to achieve much success. For every Hong Kong, there's an East Timor or a Belgian Congo that stands out as an example of epic colonial mismanagement. Even if one were to argue that Western governments have advanced past the colonial stage of rapacious greed, there is the fact that governing in lands with different customs, geographies and social systems can prove to be immensely difficult. The US has seen this in Iraq and Afghanistan and to a lesser extent in territories like Puerto Rico--no matter how steady your versions of democracy and capitalism may be, there are certain factors unique to every culture that must be taken into account when imposing your particular system upon it. One very simple example of this would be language: How could Western nations possibly expect to find enough translators to administer multilingual cities in Madagascar, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and wherever else?

Moreover, there is the problem of funding. Would the Western nations administering the cities be expected to foot the bill with their own tax dollars? Because, if so, it's easy to see that those dollars would be the first ones to be cut from those nations' budgets. This situation already affects the West's own cities, which tend to be disproportionately harmed by budget cuts during times of recession. Charter cities would be even more severely impacted since politicians could easily demagogue about how tax dollars are being wasted abroad while people are out of work at home.

I'm not willing to entirely rule out charter cities as a means of economic and political development abroad--especially since I haven't yet read Romer's own words about the idea, other than what he is quoted as saying in The Atlantic--but I still think a better approach is to identify legitimate governments that already exist in the developing world with which the West can work to promote growth and development.

No Laughing Matter

This recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by famed economist Arthur Laffer is rather weak. Barry Ritholtz has a good rebuttal here. Part of Laffer's column, though, reminded me of some research that I had done a few months back when writing an article about the Virginia budget. When discussing the effect of tax rates on economic performance, Laffer writes:

It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.

This is the same line of thinking that dominates the Virginia state legislature every time it convenes to pass a budget during lean economic times. Legislators constantly speak of the need to avoid tax increases since they would inevitably drive businesses out of the state, taking with them much-needed jobs.

I was curious as to the validity of this claim and so I decided to do a simple statistical analysis. First, I plotted the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in each state (I felt this was a decent indicator of whether businesses found the state attractive) against the tax burden of each state (a statistic that describes the combined burden of state and local taxes upon individual income). Here's what I found:


I used the data sets from both 2007 and 2008 so that state economic performance from both before and during the recession could be taken into account. Overall, though, the results were about the same: the correlation between tax rates and Fortune 500 companies in 2007 was .315; in 2008, it was .332.

I decided to follow this up by plotting state unemployment against state tax burdens to see whether perhaps jobs were lost because smaller businesses were driven away by high taxes. The result:


Again, there is no relationship. The correlation for 2007's data is .069; 2008's data has a correlation of .059.

Two caveats, though:

1) None of this is to say that state tax rates have absolutely no effect of business decisions. I'm sure that if Virginia's top marginal tax rate were increased to 25 percent then businesses would flee. But what the data does suggest is that within a fairly moderate range--say 7 percent of income to 12 percent--the effect of a state's tax burden on business location and job creation is outweighed by other factors such as workforce education, infrastructure, and overall quality of life.

2) I compiled this data a while ago and haven't had a chance to recheck it. So, it's possible that I have made a statistical error somewhere or have misinterpreted some data. If anything here seems amiss, please let me know.

Finally, my sources were the right-leaning Tax Foundation for the data on state tax burdens; Fortune Magazine (online at money.cnn.com) for the location of Fortune 500 companies; and the Bureau of Labor Statistics for state unemployment data.

Virginia Budget Cuts

Kudos to The Washington Post for highlighting the gap between Republican rhetoric and reality in this morning's editorial about the effect of state budget cuts on public universities. However, the paper got it wrong when identifying the culprit behind this sorry situation:

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) is not to blame for this. The budget cuts were ordered by his predecessor, Timothy M. Kaine (D). Like many governors, Mr. Kaine sought to balance recession-squeezed budgets by cutting subsidies for state universities, figuring the schools could absorb at least part of the blow with tuition hikes.

Kaine, himself, was at one time in the running to become the president of Virginia Commonwealth University. Thus, it's fair to conclude that he was well aware of how difficult the budget cuts would be for higher education. However, his duty as governor was to propose a balanced budget that he felt had a reasonable chance of passing both houses of the General Assembly. Constrained in that task as he was by a Republican-dominated House of Delegates that categorically refused to raise taxes, he was forced to propose a budget that included a menacing array of cuts. Kaine would have gladly raised taxes to pay for higher education if he thought the House would go along with it, but that chamber's abrogation of its responsibility to provide solid public services to the state's citizens meant that it was impossible for him to do so. Blaming the governor is the go-to response in a situation like this, but commentators need to understand that the General Assembly is the group with the real power behind the state budget.

Midnight snack

Some food for thought:

Source: Calculated Risk via Talking Points Memo

Yet despite the fact that the employment situation in America is still bleaker than it has been in decades, the conservative establishment has convinced citizens that our greatest fear should be the federal debt.

The Social Sciences

I thoroughly enjoyed Chris Beam's take on what the news would be like if it were written by political scientists. In fact, I enjoyed it almost as much as Conor Friedersdorf's follow-up about sociologists writing the news. In addition to being quite hilarious, these two articles highlight what I feel are some of the unique strengths and weaknesses of each field.

As someone who is trying to decide between a major in economics, sociology or political science--or perhaps some combination of the three--I have spent plenty of time contemplating each field's characteristics. And what has made the choice of a major so difficult is the fact that each offers unique knowledge that can be applied to the field of public policy.

The specific strength of economics is that it offers the most complete set of tools that I have yet encountered that can be used to solve public policy problems. At its very heart, economics is the study of choice and it therefore focuses on complex incentive structures that determine whether or not particular approaches, regardless of their intentions, will be effective.

Sociology, however, provides crucial insight into what the problems are that need solving. Although economists have a tendency to retreat into the Ivory Tower where everything is about "rational choice" and "productivity," the sociologist recognizes that intractable biases against minorities, women and the poor continue to prevent their socioeconomic advancement.

Political science, meanwhile, allows one to look at all of these issues within the framework of constitutional legality and public opinion. In America, this means realizing the particular opportunities and constraints that our system of government creates for solving public policy problems.

Each field is frustrating in its own way. I am baffled when individuals in the field of economics refuse to consider how irrational beliefs and actions can lead to suboptimal outcomes without proper government intervention. Similarly, it gets under my skin when sociologists argue that the simple solution to poverty is to raise minimum wages, no matter the consequences. Political scientists are perhaps the most troublesome group, because they will tell you that many great new ideas either won't attract votes or are flat-out unconstitutional.

Right now I'm stuck, but this is a discussion that will continue on this blog during the run-up to my declaring a major. What do you think would be a good route to take?

Bhopal and BP

When an Indian court handed down sentences to eight individuals for their roles in the Bhopal chemical disaster that occurred 26 years ago, it barely even registered as news for many Americans. Yet it should serve as a painful reminder that even once an environmental disaster such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is finally over, its effects can last for decades afterward. According to The New York Times account, 425 tons of toxic material remain at the Bhopal site to be cleaned up by whatever entity takes responsibility for it first. Moreover, the livelihoods of those affected by the accident--some 578,000 according to government records--remain severely impaired over a quarter century after the tragedy.
Everyone hopes that in 2036 we won't be reading stories like this about BP and the Deepwater oil spill, but we should nonetheless accept the reality that this disaster isn't going away any time soon.

The Sad Case of Helen Thomas

Much is being made about the abrupt retirement of White House correspondent Helen Thomas after some anti-Semitic remarks that she made in an interview last week. I think much of the analysis so far is missing the mark, however. Sure, it's possible that this is what happens when a fiery journalist goes a little too far, or it could be a signal of some deep-rooted problem with journalistic objectivity. But more likely, I think, is that Helen Thomas was just too old to do her job. At 89, very few people are able to function up to a level that allows them to hold a position as important and involved as White House correspondent. Old people act erratically and say things that are outlandish and inappropriate; just ask anyone who has had to take care of an aging parent. Helen Thomas is no exception, and all we've really learned from this sad episode is that someone should have tried to convince her to retire before it was too late.

The Israeli Blockade

Unlike many on the Left, I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea of an Israeli blockade of Gaza. After all, it is the Israeli government's duty to protect the livelihoods of its citizens and, frankly, it's impossible to do that when those citizens are constantly threatened with random rocket-fire. However, as this post clearly explains, the current Israeli blockade is less about defending itself than it is about inflicting indiscriminate pain upon individuals living in Gaza. Denying those in Gaza access to clean drinking water; forcing them to go without electricity for much of the day; crippling the territory's economy and its health care infrastructure: none of these makes Israel any safer from Hamas. Thus, it rings hollow when individuals like Charles Krauthammer whine that the West is attempting to de-legitimize Israeli self-defense by opposing the blockade. As it is currently structured, the blockade is about much more than simply denying Hamas material that they can use to make rockets, as this chart from The Economist shows:

via The Economist

Introduction

Hi, I'm Matt Cameron. No, not that one. Rather, I'm just a student at the University of Virginia whose interests include public policy, culture and sports. For a little over a year I've been writing sporadic opinion columns about the first topic--public policy--for school publications and my hometown newspaper, The Free Lance-Star. Recently, however, I decided to try my hand at a new form of communication: blogging. This hardly makes me unique since everyone and their mother now seems to be joining the legions of online opinionators, but I hope that this will prove to be a value exercise nonetheless. Below is a brief explanation of what this experiment is all about, in the somewhat contrived question and answer format:

Why the title?
The "young" in front of my name isn't merely a weak attempt at styling myself as a precocious artist, a la Young Jeezy or Yung Joc, . It actually refers back to a letter that was written in response to my very first column on the opinion page of The Free Lance-Star. Although the letter's praise is flattering, the "young" should serve as a reminder that I am by no means an expert in the field of public policy. Rather, I feel that my place is to convey complex policy arguments to members of my generation who would otherwise be out of the loop. In doing so, I often find that my own understanding of such matters improves and solidifies.

Why blog?
I've toyed with the idea of blogging for a while, but I've always felt more compelled toward quality rather than quantity with regards to my writing. Thus, I've devoted my time to in-depth research of a handful of political and policy-related issues that I have then written about in long-form (800-1000 words) for the print media. Only recently have I realized that blogging could be a good way to aggregate and record the assorted thoughts and ideas that occur to me between articles. Thus, one of the goals of this blog will be to strengthen my repertoire of knowledge so that I can write better columns in the future.

Equally important, however, is my hope that this blog can turn into a conversation. When writing long-form opinion pieces there is a limited amount of interaction that one can have with readers beyond receiving letters to the editor and occasionally chatting with those who have taken a particular interest in your writing. With this blog, however, I sense an opportunity to receive more--and better--feedback about my writing and my ideas. This will only work, of course, if I can keep things interesting enough to hold readers' attention, but I look forward to this challenge so that I can potentially improve my knowledge and analysis with help from my friends and acquaintances.

What to expect?
Just by virtue of blogging's nature, the writing found here will not be as thoroughly researched and painstakingly edited as that which is found in my columns. I hope that I can make up for this by exploring on a variety of interesting topics which, up to this point, haven't found their way into my writing. Among these will be obscure political and economic issues, for sure, but also things like tea, food and movies that I love but never have had as much time to write about.

Some blog posts will be long (but by no means as long as this one); some will be short; some will just consist of a picture or a graph that I found interesting. But no matter what, the content will be something that I honestly think it's worthwhile for others to experience--to borrow a bit of terminology from Econ 201, the marginal benefit of your reading any individual post on this blog should exceed the marginal cost in just about every case (even taking into account the law of diminishing returns).

One final disclaimer: I am ideologically very far to the left. This does not mean that I refuse to consider or accept opposing views--readers will find as they go along that I am actually quite far from the progressive mainstream on issues such as abortion rights, minimum wages, and globalization. However, it is worth noting that I have firmly rejected the notion of a "traditional America" that so many conservatives embrace. We are a fundamentally different nation today than we were at our founding, and therefore we need to take a fundamentally different approach to how we structure our political, economic and social systems. Thus, there will be a lot of talk about higher taxes, increased government regulation and nuanced foreign policy on this blog. If conservatives can get beyond my sometimes radical propositions, then I hope they will critique my positions in a logical and civilized manner--after all, one of the points of this blog is to incorporate new perspectives into my thinking. And for those who share my convictions, I hope the material that I publish here will help you to stand up to those who shun facts and reason. Progressivism needs to be a bulwark against the onslaught of ignorance and confusion that is currently advancing upon America, and I hope that in its own little way this blog can help with that.