Author Page for Scott Lemieux

Priorities

Spending money on potentially life-saving research, with “overwhelming public support; bi-partisan backing in both chambers of Congress; the demands of medical researchers who are tired of watching the United States fall further and further behind; intense pressure from Nancy Reagan [and] the fact that congressional Democrats are going to use this as a wedge issue throughout the campaign cycle”–No. Not even if Bush has to use his very first veto to stop it.

Spending money on bullshit crisis pregnancy centers, where women “who consult with pregnancy resource centers often get misleading information about the health risks associated with having an abortion”–oh yeah, let the money flow, like a mountain stream. (via the mighty TBogg).

I would say conservertarianism was dead. If I thought it had ever existed. Meanwhile, to support a clinic that actually provides a valuable service for women and is under siege, click here.

Kantian Nihilism?

Chris Muir (who either–my bet–hasn’t read a word of, or utterly fails to understand, Kant) essays some pretension for the wingnut masses, and flops embarrassingly. More so than usual, I mean.

Although I suppose talking about “Kantian nihilism” (I can’t wait for his future strips about “Aristotelian anti-teleology” and “command economy Hayekianism”) makes a perverse kind of sense for people who think that “classical liberalism” is compatible with Carl Schmitt’s theories of executive power…

…see also Hilzoy.

Keep This Man Out of Diplomatic Relations. And Subways.

Good God man, haven’t you done enough to humiliate this country? Will it ever end? (As Lindsay says, “Every woman will recognize the guy who sidles up and starts “casually” giving you a backrub without even looking at you, because he wants to preserve deniability in case you freak out.”) Maybe in 2009 we can start sending an representative who isn’t a walking, incoherently mumbling argument against democracy to international summits…

…zuzu has more.

"Grown men were walking up to cops on street corners begging them to shoot."

The little weather box on the top right of the front page of the Times said that today’s climate was “oppressive,” whereas tomorrow will be “stifling.” I was somewhat puzzled by this, given that tomorrow projects as even hotter, but a third party made a strong case that being stifled would in fact be worse than being oppressed. Anyway, either term seems quite inadequate.

In a related note, there are people who say that they don’t like the climate in the Pacific Northwest. Such people are, to put it charitably, clearly not in control of anything that could be described as “mental faculties.”

The Lobby Diversion

I think Matt is essentially right here with respect to some critics of the Mearsheimer/Walt article:

Last, but certainly not least, is this: “We can — and should — debate the roll of ethnic groups in American politics, the nature of the US-Israel relationship, and just about anything under the sun.” Those sort of disclaimers were de rigeur for participants in the smear campaign against Walt and Mearsheimer at the time, but the most noteworthy thing about the controversy, from where I sit, is that folks on the other side seem, in fact, to be totally unwilling to actually debate the issues at hand.

Instead, there’s been a massive amount of harping on the failings — some real, some wholly imagined — of the Walt/Mearsheimer essay. And, to be sure, it had its problems. But still, there’s a policy issue here to be debated, and it actually should be debated.

Personally, I would be fascinated to read a serious defense of the proposition that making Israel by far the largest recipient of American foreign aid serves our national interests or else is dictated by considerations of abstract morality. Then we could debate!

I think this is right–critics of the article haven’t really been willing to seriously debate these questions, and I also agree with Matt’s implication that it would be extraordinarily difficult to justify Israel getting so much more aid than India, say.

However, it must also be said that M/W opened this particular exit. The central point of the article, after all, is not to defend the claim that American policy toward Israel is not in the national interest–M/W establish this premise in a few paragraphs and for the rest of the paper take it as a given before moving on to the real argument, that this disjuncture is caused by the power of the pro-Israel lobby. I think that this is, in fact, an object lesson in why assertions about the power of Israeli lobby are almost always useless at best and counterproductive at worst. As anyone who studies interest groups knows, making convincing casual claims about the influence of interest groups is notoriously difficult even when groups have more resources and conflicts with the ideology of decision-makers are more evident than is the case here–the fact that state actors have their own interests and normative goals (and multiple sources of funding and support) makes untangling cause-and-effect is nearly impossible, even with the most careful study. And, needless to say, M/W’s arguments on this score are far from careful; indeed, their grasp on the relevant literature is tenuous at best, and leads them into frankly embarrassing howlers. I agree with Jacob Levy that their claim that “The mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest to bring it about” is the ” worst paragraph of political science I’ve read in many years;” the idea that the state’s natural equilibrium is to pursue the “national interest” and only those opposed to the “national interest” need lobbies is just absurd, and would lead to rather unsavory conclusions such as that the abolition of slavery and Jim Crow were not in the “national interest.” (Could somebody please not only kill functionalism but cremate it and scatter the ashes so nobody can try to resurrect it again?) It’s understandable that people are picking up on the tendentiousness of their analysis, and unfortunate as it is that it obscures the important and defensible points they do make one can hardly blame their critics for noting that their central claim just isn’t very well-defended.

But moreover, I also don’t understand the decision to focus on the power of the pro-Israel lobby, because it’s ultimately beside the point. What matters is whether the policy can be defended in realist and/or moral terms, not the virtually impossible question of exactly what influence a particular lobby has had. Even if M/W hadn’t provided people who wish to evade this debate with such low-hanging fruit, I don’t think that trying to answer virtually impossible questions about the precise influence of the pro-Israel lobby does much to serve the debate. What’s really important is whether state decision-makers should want what they’re trying to sell, and that’s the debate worth having.

Anti-Choice License Plate Update

I wrote recently about states who (with the support, natch, of inexplicable NARAL endorsee Joe Lieberman) allow people to buy anti-choice license plates, with the proceeds going to nearly worthless (and intentionally obstructionist) “crisis pregnancy centers,” but do not offer the same option to pro-choice groups. (In Tennessee, supporters of treason in defense of slavery can have their symbolic license plate, but advocates of a woman’s reproductive freedom cannot.) The Supreme Court, unfortunately, has declined to hear the case, so the bad 6CA opinion upholding the discriminatory plates program will stand for the time being (thanks to reader L. Chadderdon.) The Alternet article also has some interesting stuff about the maneuvering of anti-choice legislators:

According to a Law.com article, Sen. Gloria Butler, D-Ga., sponsored an amendment for a “pro-family, pro-choice” license plate in the Georgia Senate, but dropped it when Republican senators proposed an alternate amendment that would channel funds from the pro-choice license plate to adoption agencies instead of Planned Parenthood, as Butler wanted. In fact, those same senators specifically prevented any group that provided abortions from receiving any license plate revenue. Apparently they missed the point that a license plate for choice should aid organizations that actually advocate choice.

Republican South Carolina Sen. Mike Fair came up with what he evidently saw as a solution to the debate. In 2005 he introduced a bill to the South Carolina general assembly that would allow for a “Choose Death” license plate. (Yes, he was serious). Of course, the proceeds wouldn’t go to nonprofit organizations advocating abortion as an option — the funds would go to the Department of Mental Health, where they would be “used for post-abortion trauma counseling for females who have chosen to have abortions.”

To be clear, these are the legislators that pro-choice centrists believe we can safely trust to protect reproductive freedom if Roe is overturned. Right.

Up In The Wind

Now that’s the old-school Wrigley Field. But what’s the deal with the game starting at 6? Of course, missing the first two innings worked out well, but…

"The blame of those ye better"

Remember when James Lileks gave an obscene, definitively chickenhawkish (“from my home in suburban Minnesota, I feel comfortable lecturing you for your unwillingness to engage in a suicidal revolutionary mission after you had already been sold out by the Americans once”) response to an Iraqi blogger who was once lionized by Bush’s blogospheric lickspittles but was quickly thrown under the bus when he was no longer uncritically supportive of the botched occupation? Well, we can see the same thing happening again, as the protest babes and Cedar Revolution seem to have lost their luster now that the narrative has become a bit more complicated. A number of commenters did not take kindly to Michael Totten’s point that the indiscriminate bombing of moderate regions of Lebanon might not actually advance the strategic goal of attacking Hezbollah, and an email from a friend who was forced to flee to Syria. Among the first to abandon ship is Trainwreck Media founder and serious foreign policy scholar Roger L. “thanks to 9/11, I’m outraged by Chappaquiddick” Simon, who three comments down politely hopes that Totten’s newly displaced friend will “grow up,” advice rather easily dispensed from a well-appointed house in sunny California. (Simon, of course, was also a big fan of Lileks’ middle finger to people insufficiently grateful for their “liberation.”) Frankly, this development is not without its merits; I prefer contemptuous imperialism served undiluted rather than behind a paper-thin mask of liberal pieties.

For further unintentional comedy, check out this guy, who seems to think that building state capacity is just a simple matter of will. I know it would be expecting too much to think that these hacks might read some Weber, but perhaps the current situation in Iraq might suggest that things are just a touch more complicated?

Private Schools and Vouchers: The False Panacea

Echidne, Steve and Mahablog have already effectively covered this Times story about a new government study about public and private schools. There are two stories here: 1)the differences between the two are modest, and public schools actually outperform conservative Christian schools in many respects, and 2)the administration of course buried this study on a Friday.

Maha also brings up the data about voucher programs, which is an interesting question. There is, first of all, a constitutional question raised by vouchers. My position is that I don’t think there’s any necessary violation of the First Amendment inherent in voucher programs, even if some parents will inevitably use this money to choose parochial schools. The Cleveland program upheld by the Supreme Court in Zelman, however, is a different story. As Souter’s brilliant dissent pointed out in painstaking detail, 96.6% of the voucher money went to parochial schools, and this was an inevitable consequence of vouchers being set at a financial level that made subsidized parochial schools the only viable option for most eligible families. Voucher programs that offer a genuine choice between secular and parochial schools might be constitutional; but this program offered a “choice” in only the emptiest, most formal sense. (The program is also structured in a way that undermines the market justifications for such programs–surely setting up a competition to benefit poor families would allow them to choose between a secular and religious education as well as private and public.) Either cities (perhaps with the help of the feds) should finance vouchers at a level that would involve genuine choice, or they are violating the Establishment Clause.

But leaving aside the constitutional questions, what’s the evidence that the programs work? Justice Thomas compares the importance of Zelman to Brown and cites Frederick Douglass on the emancipatory potential of education, but is that what’s at stake here? That doesn’t seem to be the case:

It’s increasingly clear that a disturbing number of voucher schools are outright abominations.

An investigation this June by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found problems in some voucher schools that—even to those numb to educational horror stories—break one’s heart. No matter how severe one’s criticisms of the Milwaukee Public Schools, nothing is as abysmal as the conditions at some voucher schools.

Some of them had high school graduates teaching students. Some were nothing more than refurbished, cramped storefronts. Some did not have any discernable curriculum and only a few books. Some did not teach evolution or anything else that might conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible.

At one school, teacher and students were on their way to McDonald’s. At another, lights were turned off to save money. A third used the back alley as a playground.

One school is located in an old leather factory, another in a former tire store, a third is above a vacuum cleaner shop and hair salon.

As one of the reporters said, “I think we expected from the start to see some strong schools and some weak ones. But seeing firsthand the effect that troubled schools can have on children’s futures and lives was disturbing.”

Overall, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel estimated that about 10 percent of the schools visited demonstrate “alarming deficiencies” without “the ability, resources, knowledge or will to offer children even a mediocre education.”

That’s a cautious estimate. First of all, reporters made pre-arranged visits, giving schools time to put their best faces forward. Second, nine of the program’s 115 schools —an additional 8 percent—refused to allow reporters in

.

(In addition, more than 70% of the money in this program goes to religious schools. The week-long study also notes the obvious: parents are not necessarily informed consumers, and will sometimes pick bad schools. And in some sense, this is necessary, because until struggling school systems become a Lake Woebegone where highly skilled teachers, administrators, and other resources are infinite somebody has to attend bad schools.)

Essentially, the idea that voucher schools inevitably produce better results is a matter of blind faith (“The lack of research and data is stunning.”) Of course, one can argue that there’s no reason that a voucher program needs to be as badly designed as Milwuakee’s, and that may be true. But attempts to introduce “competition” are overwhelmingly likely to be at best marginal tinkering that will do little to solve underlying problems.

UPDATE: In response to a comment, I should clarify that I’m not arguing–and Souter (and Breyer‘s) dissents, as I read them, are not arguing–that the Court should select an arbitrary cut-off point past which the percentage of money going to parochial schools is unconstitutional. Even 97% of the money going to religious schools is not, in and of itself, proof that no substantive choice of a secular school is available for most parents, although evidently this makes it much more likely than if it was 40%. The point is simply that the court has to investigate a program’s structure and the available options carefully and evaluate whether parents have a real choice to use their vouchers to attend secular schools, or if the program is structured in the way to ensure that there is a real choice. I do think that (for better or worse) the Establishment Clause requires more than relying on the flimsy tautology that creating vouchers ipso facto provides parents with choice to spend their money as they see fit.

UPDATE THE SECOND: I also think Matt makes a good point here: hoping that some magic-bullet educational reform can address problems of inequality and injustice is not a plan, and indeed gets things backward. You would almost certainly improve educational outcomes by making society more egaliatarian much more so than vice versa. Relatedly, I think it’s also worth emphasizing the point made by Stevens in his Zelman dissent:

First, the severe educational crisis that confronted the Cleveland City School District when Ohio enacted its voucher program is not a matter that should affect our appraisal of its constitutionality. In the 1999—2000 school year, that program provided relief to less than five percent of the students enrolled in the district’s schools. The solution to the disastrous conditions that prevented over 90 percent of the student body from meeting basic proficiency standards obviously required massive improvements unrelated to the voucher program. Of course, the emergency may have given some families a powerful motivation to leave the public school system and accept religious indoctrination that they would otherwise have avoided, but that is not a valid reason for upholding the program.

Even if vouchers worked–and as far as I can tell, there’s pretty much no evidence that they do–at any plausible level of funding they would still be grossly inadequate to address the problems of a severely deficient educational system.

Insights About Conflict in the Middle East

I certainly don’t have any, so I direct you first to this post by Hilzoy, which does the exceptionally useful job of laying about the underlying facts and dilemmas in a lucid manner. For analysis, see Jonathan. And E. J. Dionne notes that the Domino (or as he calls it, the “Big Bang”) Theory justification for the Iraq war can officially be buried. But I was so convinced that pro-American and Israeli liberal democracies were going to sweep the region–after all, there are a lot of pretty women in Lebanon!

Except That He’s White. And Rich. And A Crook. But Other Than That, They’re Still Not Remotely Similar

The Reverend William Lawson takes the conservative victimization ball and runs it well past the point of pure moral idiocy:

Lawson likened Lay to James Byrd, a black man who was dragged to death in a racially motivated murder near Jasper eight years ago.

“Ken Lay was neither black nor poor, as James Byrd was, but I’m angry because Ken was the victim of a lynching,” said Lawson, who predicted that history will vindicate Lay.

His comments, met by hearty applause, referred to Lay’s recent federal trial on fraud and conspiracy charges stemming from Enron’s unraveling in 2001 and four charges of bank fraud. Lay had planned to appeal his conviction and was awaiting sentencing when he died.

Yeah, getting justly convicted in a court of law for your part in a massive swindle that robbed countless people of their life savings and being dragged behind a car to your death by racists for no reason whatsoever, the similarities are just…what the hell is wrong with a person who would say something like this?

Court Blocks Enforcement of Georgia Voting Law

As a follow-up to my previous posts about Georgia’s attempt to pass an unconstitutional voting law, the federal courts have blocked enforcement of Georgia’s new attempt at vote suppression electoral reform. The argument seems to be that the new law is no longer a patently unconstitutional poll tax (as was the case with the previous bill), but is still unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.