What Happens When There is No Contraception

The New York Times has a harrowing story about women in Venezuela who cannot access contraception. A raging economic recession has made condoms, IUDs, and other birth control products prohibitively expensive for many poorer women; at the same time, the cost of raising a family has also spiraled out of control. Many women have resorted to shady back alley abortion attempts (it is still illegal in the country), but unsurprisingly these are exceptionally dangerous.

If you're a conservative, maybe the fact that it's Venezuela and you can nyah-nyah about it since Chavez is of course AOC's role model for Americana will make the story resonate more. But let's be clear -- America is not as far off from this as we'd imagine ourselves to be. The legality of abortion is on the very brink, and cases like Hobby Lobby threaten contraceptive access as well -- again, especially for poorer women. It may be that in a few years, the main difference between America and Venezuela is that we have proportionally fewer women in the sort of abject poverty that is comparable to that found in the South American country -- but for those who do find themselves in that situation, this story could easily become a U.S. story as well.

The Non-Mismatch of Rich Kids

Paul Tough has a bracing article in the New York Times about how collegiate admissions practices systematically favor underperforming wealthy kids who can afford to pay full tuition, framed around efforts to reverse that trend at Connecticut's Trinity College (via).

The short version is that, outside an incredibly tiny slice of hyper-elite schools like Harvard, most universities need tuition dollars in order to make their budgets work (this would include very good schools like Trinity, ranked in the top 50 of U.S. liberal arts colleges). Poorer students, who need scholarship support, represent a loss of tuition dollars -- in effect, schools need to balance our the low-income students they admit with high-income tuition-payers, even in cases where the poorer student is on merit alone a better candidate.

The way this plays out in practice is usually match-ups between high-GPA/low-SAT poorer students versus low-GPA/high-SAT wealthier students, which are repeatedly resolved in favor of the latter. The high standardized test scores are viewed as at least balancing out the low GPA, so it isn't really a case of taking a less-qualified wealthier kid over a scrappier, smarter, but poorer candidate. But often, it turns out, these test scores are themselves an artifact of wealth -- they reflect nothing more than that the student can afford SAT tutors and knows how to "play the game". Once they get to college, they revert back to high school form -- relative underperformers, unmotivated, and not on the level of their peers.

When Angel Pérez arrived at Trinity and took a close look at the way the admissions office had been making its decisions, what he found left him deeply concerned. “We were taking some students who probably should not have been admitted, but we were taking them because they could pay,” he told me. “They went to good high schools, but they were maybe at the bottom of their class. The motivation wasn’t there. So the academic quality of our student body was dropping.” 

At Trinity, Pérez’s predecessors had been able to capitalize on a pattern that admissions officers say they often see: At expensive prep schools, even students close to the bottom of the class usually have above-average SAT scores, mostly because they have access to high-octane test-prep classes and tutors. 

“O.K., you’re not motivated, you’re doing the minimum at your high school,” Pérez explained, describing the students Trinity used to admit in droves. “You have not worked as hard as your peers. But you did the test prep, and you learned how to play the SAT game.” 

If you work in admissions at a place like Trinity was before Pérez arrived, SAT scores can provide a convenient justification for admitting the kind of students you might feel compelled to accept because they can pay full tuition. It’s hard to feel good about choosing an academically undeserving rich kid over a striving and ambitious poor kid with better high school grades. But if the rich student you’re admitting has a higher SAT score than the poor student you’re rejecting, you can tell yourself that your decision was based on “college readiness” rather than ability to pay. 

The problem is, rich kids who aren’t motivated to work hard and get good grades in high school often aren’t college-ready, however inflated their SAT scores may be. At Trinity, this meant there was a growing number of affluent students on campus who couldn’t keep up in class and weren’t interested in trying. “It had a morale effect on our faculty,” Pérez told me. “They were teaching a very divided campus. The majority of students were really smart and engaged and curious, and then you’ve got these other students” — the affluent group with pumped-up SAT scores and lower G.P.A.s — “who were wondering, How did I get into this school?”

The whole article is great, but I highlight this section because it at least gestures at an issue I've been  flagging for years: the potential (but largely unremarked upon) "mismatch" of wealthy students being admitted to universities that they are insufficiently prepared for. The "mismatch" hypothesis was pioneered by Richard Sander as an objection to race-based affirmative action programs which, he contended, systematically place minority students at schools above their intellectual level and thus harm their putative beneficiary. The talented student who would be a great fit for and excel at the University of Maryland instead is admitted to Cornell, where he struggles mightily -- ultimately losing more than he gains.

It was an interesting argument, but I argued then and maintain now that it is one whose logic would apply across many other cases where students are admitted to colleges that are -- at least based purely on academics -- "reach" schools. Athletes are one obvious example, but wealthy students whose case-for-admission relies primarily on (a) their ability to pay and (b) goosed standardized test scores that are also primarily a function of ability to pay would be another. Yet parents, guidance counselors, advisers, employers -- nobody acts as if these students will be hurt if they are admitted to Cornell instead of Maryland. Indeed, the entire structure of the collegiate application system is premised on the opposite -- a mad rush to ensure they do get into the "best" school possible.

Maybe they're all deluded; though it's just as likely that they will instead benefit exactly as they anticipate -- optimistically, from being pushed and forced to find a new gear in themselves, cynically from the value of letterhead. This is the only article I've ever seen even gesture at the possibility that the wealthy admits are themselves being ill-served -- finding themselves in an academic environment they're ill-prepared for, regressing back to their high school mean, and wondering whether they really belong at all (elsewhere in the article, we're told that Pell Grant recipients -- a good proxy for low-income students -- have significantly higher graduation rates than the student body writ large, suggesting that they're on the whole a stronger cadre of students).

But really, the fleeting consideration of this possibility is the exception that tests the rule. Is anybody truly concerned that the wealthy kid who got into Trinity primarily because they could afford to pay full-freight will be damaged for life? We might (and probably do) have sympathy for the meritocracy-based arguments that say he shouldn't have been admitted, but are we really also going to act like the objection to this system is for his own good too? No, obviously. The circumstances where smart, qualified, but poorer students are denied admission to good schools in favor of less-talented, less-qualified, but wealthier candidates is wrong -- but not because it's actually to the disadvantage of the latter group.

Maplewood, MO Bond Trap Case Moves Forward

One of the more arcane, but important, issues to gain renewed spotlight in the wake of Ferguson is how the deeply fragmented municipal structure of the greater St. Louis area encourages abusive policing practices. Basically, the area around St. Louis is divided into countless tiny independent municipalities, each which often has their own police force, governmental units, judicial system, and so on.

It's not really economical for each of these small towns to run their own mini-government, and so many of them have resorted to policing-for-profit. They squeeze out revenue from vulnerable community members (often people of color) by exceedingly aggressive traffic law enforcement, predatory bond practices, overpolicing of minor regulatory violations, and other like practices (The DOJ report on Ferguson highlighted these practices as part of its findings that the Ferguson PD routinely violated the law and operated with an eye towards revenue generation rather than serving its own community).

Right now, for example, there is a lawsuit against the city of Maplewood, Missouri (population: 8,046) alleging that it has a deliberate policy of trapping poor motorists facing traffic finds with bond payments that they can't afford to pay. The plaintiffs

assert the City automatically issues an arrest warrant whenever someone ticketed for violating its traffic and vehicle laws fails to pay a fine or appear in court. Once arrested, the motorist is allegedly presented with a Hobson's choice: Either pay a bond the amount of which was set in advance without any determination of his ability to pay it, or sit in jail possibly for days. The plaintiffs further contend that once a warrant has been issued, a motorist cannot avoid it by voluntarily returning to the municipal court or paying the outstanding fine, but must either submit to a custodial arrest or retain a lawyer to argue a motion before the municipal judge to vacate the warrant. If the court does not grant the motion, the motorist, whose presence in court the judge allegedly demands, will be arrested and jailed. Jail, the plaintiffs assert, is the means by which the City attempts to coerce the motorist into paying the bond to secure his release. The complaint indicates that the City's policy or custom involves additional steps that can ensnare motorists in repeated cycles of arrest, jailing, and pressure to pay a bond irrespective of their ability to do so. 

Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit allowed that claim to proceed, rejecting city arguments that it is immune from suit. This is a preliminary ruling completely detached from the substantive merits of the case (for technical reasons not worth going into, it's easier to sue cities compared to states for alleged constitutional violations); no doubt as the case proceeds there will be textured arguments about the specific nature of Maplewood's bond practices and any viable defenses that they can put forward.

Nonetheless, it is absolutely a good thing that this sort of behavior is being spotlighted and will now have to stand up to federal judicial scrutiny. This is a case worth keeping an eye on.

Post- (and Pre-)National Roundup

No, this isn't about Tillerson (or Goldstein, or McEntee ... goodness, this was a hell of a morning). I delivered the lecture on Nationalism in our Political Theory class today -- which went fine, except that I also have to teach a section on Nationalism tomorrow and now I've used up all my knowledge on the subject. Time for many rounds of my old standbys -- "say more on that", "well, what do you think?", and of course "break off into small groups to discuss."

Anyway, roundup time!

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Advances in turbine technology are making wind power a real player in electricity market -- and not grading on the "renewable energy" curve either.

A powerful story on a UC-Berkeley student living in an unheated trailer with no sewage hookup .... that he's about to be evicted from. This is an extreme story, but it gets to why I get very defensive when Berkeley students are attacked in the media as supposedly epitomizing careless, unserious millennial frivolity. Many of the students here are coming from places and backgrounds where they're well aware of what it means to be attending UC-Berkeley, and are behaving accordingly under conditions that God willing I'll never come close to. When they're lazily stereotyped as aimless hippie stoners, it disrespects them, their work ethic, their talent, and their perseverance.

U. Penn. Law Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff on his colleague, Amy Wax, whom he persuasively argues has converted into the academic equivalent of an Ann Coulter provocateur. This passage is also generally applicable:

What academic freedom does not provide, however, is a free pass entitling faculty who say inflammatory things to escape denunciation or to engage in toxic behavior without consequence. Invoking academic freedom to delegitimize sharp criticism or to claim impunity for improper conduct is a misuse of that principle.

Many people have seen Adam Serwer's excellent commentary on Tamika Mallory's relationship with Louis Farrakhan (a sterling example, incidentally, of how to explain the NoI's appeal to certain segments of the Black community without washing away it's hideously bigoted track record), but Stacey Aviva Flint is another good addition to the list of Black Jews whose opinions you should read on this matter.

Gretchen Rachel Hammond -- the half-Indian Jewish transwoman best known for breaking the story of the Chicago Dyke March expelling Jewish marchers and then being fired from her own newspaper for covering the story -- has a powerful piece detailing her experience and her "divorce" from the trans community in its wake. It is a poignant, cutting, and often very sad piece -- not the least because, for all her fulminations against "intersectionality", the concept in its original manifestation would be very well suited to articulating the sort of marginalization and exclusion Hammond details (one would not be off the mark in summarizing Hammond's experience as one of being "split at the root" -- Adrienne Rich's felicitous phrase which has often been approvingly quoted in the intersectionalist literature).

Egregious Professor Roundup

I got an email from an academic in Italy addressed to "Egregious Professor David Schraub." Apparently, that's a common issue because "egregio" has a meaning closer to "excellent" in Italian. Nonetheless, I kind of want to change my Twitter handle to "Egregious Professor."

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This is a from last year, but Jacob Levy gives a qualified defense of "safe spaces" in the academic context that is really fantastic, and well-worth a read.

Fifteen Jewish extremists arrested in Israel for threatening Arabs, including the notorious Bentzi Gopstein.

The Montana Republican Party is the sort of place where, if you bodyslam a reporter, you'll have to fend off criticism -- from those who say you should have shot him.

Kevin Williamson has an interesting piece on the pathologies of poor White communities. I don't necessarily endorse it, but it is a rare example of someone taking the way we talk about poor Black communities and earnestly applying those same standards to Trump-backing Whites.

Bezalel Smotrich is a dick in every single possible aspect, so his remarks on the "me too" campaign are entirely on-brand.

Remember how I said "Not Knowing "Zio" is a Slur is an Indictment, Not a Defense"? Yeah, same thing applies to not knowing that portraying George Soros as tentacle-monster encircling the globe is antisemitic.

Good Shoes Might Save You This Time

This is a very interesting article by McMillan Cottom explaining why poor people seem to "waste" money buying certain luxury goods (especially clothes). Cottom, whose family experienced multigenerational poverty, explains that such purchases can serve important signaling functions that -- sometimes -- facilitate successful navigation of institutions which might allow for upward mobility. The parent who "looks" middle-class (and therefore looks like she knows how to raise a stink) might be more successful at insuring her school doesn't overlook the needs of her child. The job applicant who "looks" professional (and how often have we all gotten the advice of how important professional appearances are!) might be more likely to be picked out for a higher-status job with greater benefits. Even the supplicant seeking public benefits who "looks" like she knows how to navigate the bureaucratic maze may be more likely to get favorable attention from the various officials and functionaries whose discretionary judgment can make or break a case.

The essay is a useful corrective to the instinct of many to assume the irrationality of the poor -- particularly when they make choices that at first blush make no sense to us (the infamous "If I Were a Poor Black Kid"  essay is a classic of the genre). Very frequently, choices that seem "bad" from the outside have a logic to them -- albeit often a logic born out of coercion and impossible choices -- that makes them quite sensible to persons actually living in the relevant circumstances. It's easy to say "joining a gang is a bad choice." It's harder to say that if not joining a gang means that the gang will gang-rape your sister, or beat you bloody every day before school. It's easy to say "the quick money from dealing drugs isn't worth the long-term consequences of ruining your future." It's harder to say that if your discounted utility is such that you can say "I might not live to be grown up. My life wasn't promised to me."

Put another way, if people aren't making what we deem to be good, pro-social choices, we can conclude either:

1. They have malsocial preferences (they're "bad people" who don't have a good set of ends);
2. They're irrational (their choices don't lead to their desired ends); or
3. The incentive structures are wrong (their rational choices, in pursuit of reasonable ends, nonetheless don't yield pro-social results).

Frequently, we rush to explanations #1 and #2 -- ones which pathologize the poor (and other outgroups). But explanation #3 will frequently be more plausible (not to mention less degrading). And essays like this, which disturb the idea that poor people are simply stupid or diseased, can help point us towards other interventions that view the poor as we view ourselves -- as generally good, rational people who want a basically decent life and are trying as best they can, within the limits of their resources, to secure those ends.

Motivated Reasoning: Social Mobility Edition

I've become more and more interested in the research on motivated cognition -- the processes by which we interpret evidence in a biased manner and reason directionally to our preferred ends. This literature is equal parts fascinating and depressing: fascinating as a window into our modes of thinking, depressing in that it has grim implications for both how much we should trust our learned intuitions and for the ability for evidence and facts to move our mental needles towards more accurate appraisals.

Today, I read an interesting study by John R. Chambers, Lawton K. Swan, and Martin Heesacker entitled Perceptions of U.S. Social Mobility Are Divided (and Distorted) Along Ideological Lines (forthcoming in Psychological Science). The study, as the name suggests, explores how people perceive facts relating to social mobility in the United States. They asked two main questions: First, they asked participants to provide their views on social mobility directly, by asking them to predict how many people who grew up in the bottom, middle, and top third of income brackets end up (as young adults) in the bottom/middle/top brackets (high social mobility would suggest that people move brackets regularly -- a society in which one's origins played no role in economic outcomes would see an even 33/33/33 split; low social mobility would suggest that people generally stay in the income bracket of their parents). Second, they asked people to appraise whether social mobility opportunities had increased or declined over time (they could say it increased a lot, a little, hadn't changed, decreased a little, or decreased a lot).

The results?

Everybody underestimated social mobility (that is, they thought our society was less socially mobile than it was). And likewise, people thought that we had experienced a decline in social mobility opportunities over the past few decades (in reality, social mobility rates have remained flat). But on both points, liberals were further from the mark than conservatives. The authors suggest that this is because liberals are generally pessimistic about the state of economic and social opportunity in America, and so they are motivated to belief that social mobility is worse than it is. Conservatives, by contrast, are more optimistic about America's meritocratic and egalitarian nature, and so (though they underestimated our social mobility too) ended up closer to the right figures.

I bring this up not because it means that social mobility is not a problem. After all, social mobility could simultaneously be more common than we thought and still too low, and indeed there are other western countries which dramatically out-perform America on this front. Rather, I mention these findings because, as the authors note, sometimes motivated cognition is perceived to be a conservative problem ("that's why they don't believe in global warming! They're just cognitively biased!"), and in reality it is a problem shared by all (I assume most of my readers are liberals and thus could use the reminder; conservatives preparing to gloat should know there are plenty of cases where the right is the party led astray). After all, if I'm being honest I can say I was surprised to find that most people underestimated social mobility (which is, of course, exactly what the study would predict would be my response). It's hard for me -- now knowing the data -- to say with confidence how I would have answered the study questions in my naive state, but I suspect at the very least I would have marked that social mobility was slightly worse off than it had been in decades past, and that would have been wrong. And the most likely explanation for its wrongness is that I have certain ideological priors that predispose me to having certain beliefs about the fairness of the American system.

Now, if one wanted to fight the data, there are ways to go about it. Perhaps while social mobility generally has remained unchanged (and is better than we thought), it might be the case that for particular subgroups (over-represented amongst liberals?), social mobility has decreased. There is some evidence pointing in that direction, and this could cause certain people to misperceive social mobility for the polity writ large based on the particular experience of their own group. Another possibility is that the abolishment of Jim Crow, and the resulting opportunities gains for racial minorities, had an upward-social mobility effect that canceled out other factors which generally reduced such mobility -- but that the former is perceived as a one-time "low-hanging fruit" situation while the latter are viewed as more permanent. But, these arguments are, as I said, fighting the data -- it seems likely that the general conclusion (that, for motivated ideological reasons, liberals underestimate the amount of social mobility in America) is accurate. And as a liberal, it's always worth remembering my own fallibility.

Post-Travel Mini-Roundup

Settled into Maryland. I'm thinking of staying for awhile, then going directly to Minnesota (instead of flying back to Champaign in the interim). I just can't handle all this travel.

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The IDF is thinking of expelling "price tag" settlers from the West Bank (they apparently are having difficulty mustering up enough evidence to charge them with crimes).

Meanwhile, the Jersualem Post notes that if it had been 50 Palestinians who infiltrated and attacked an army base, the outcome would have been far different (and far bloodier). The fact is, these "price tag" thugs are terrorists and should be treated accordingly.

If I were a poor Black kid, I'd magically become insanely technologically literate through sheer force of will. I'd also simply think away all the other constraints upon my life chances -- hunger, gangs, health care.... whatever. I'd basically be Superman. It'd be awesome. Damn it, now it's all I want to do. Where do I sign up?

Speaking of the above, the Onion beat them to it. Seriously, the parallels are scary (Via).

The New Peasant Class

One of the major questions that has floated around the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is the simple "what do they want?" Obviously, we can answer this in abstract terms: economic justice, easing of burdens on the lower and working classes, and (slightly more concretely) accountability for the people who got us into this mess in the first place (namely, Wall Street). But there has been very little in the way of specific policy proposals. Indeed, even the overall ideology is fuzzy -- supporters range from Ron Paulites (they are everywhere, aren't they) to socialists and communists, to mainstream unions, to some Democratic politicians, to relatively apolitical Americans who are simply overcome with frustration. My friend Matt Cole makes a decent defense of this mode of operation -- not making "demands" of the system but rather expressing itself in a more "aesthetic" or expressivist sense.

But Rorty Bomb has done some interesting work parsing the "We are the 99%" tumblr to try and figure out what the movement wants. And the results are sobering. OWS is not about mid-twentieth century liberalism -- increasing unionization leading to the suburban house and the two-car garage. Nor is it about socialist revolution -- smashing the capitalist state and redistributing power and dignity to the workers. What the 99% want, RB argues, is decidedly pre-modern -- bearing most in common with historical peasant revolts. They want to be free from the burden of crushing debt, have access to enough resources so they're not consistently living hand-to-mouth. That's it.

To people who think OWS is the first step to the opening a new horizon, this is profoundly demoralizing. There is nothing bold about these desires. They are ancient and basic; if anything, they are the result of people too downtrodden to dream of anything more.

But at the same time, the very simplicity of what is being asked for here also gives it greater moral punch. Surely, in a country as rich as ours, with the bounty we possess, we can give them this much.

Want a Broader Tax Base? Reduce Income Inequality

The current tax orthodoxy amongst congressional Republicans has been simple: no more taxes, period. But some Republican presidential contenders realize that's unsustainable. And they've finally hit on a tax increase they can support: raising taxes on the bottom 50% of American workers. The language is "broadening the tax base", and the argument is that these are Americans who pay no income tax at all (though of course they pay other taxes, such as social security and sales taxes), because their incomes fall below the minimum required to trigger tax liability.

Libertarian blogger Radley Balko* concurs with those who find it worrisome that half the country pays nothing in income taxes. The problem, as he sees it, is that "an increasingly small percentage of earners fund the government, we’ll soon have a majority of people who pay no tax voting for more and more government services they benefit from, but don’t have to pay for." The reason we want to broaden the tax base is to ensure that everybody (or at least as many people as is feasible) have "skin in the game", that is, have an incentive to care about governmental expenditures.

The concern is legitimate, but it doesn't necessarily take us where Balko thinks it does. Let's put aside for the moment the fact that just because a majority of Americans don't pay income taxes doesn't actually mean that majority controls policy (both because of apportionment issues, and also because of structural concerns which disproportionately reduce the influence the bottom 50% have in political institutions). And also put aside the fact that taxation is not the only way that one can have "skin in the game" -- poorer Americans are more likely to be dependent on governmental services for the provision of basic needs, and thus have every reason to care about the efficacy of such services (Balko's main concern is less effected by this, because his primary worry is that government will do more, not that it will do what it does poorly -- though he suspects it will).

That fifty percent of Americans don't pay income tax is not because our tax code is set up to say "the poorest half of Americans pay nothing". Rather, the income tax system simply decrees that people who make below a certain threshold pay nothing income taxes, presumably because we feel that taking money away from people who earn that little represents too much of a hardship. And, as income inequality continues to skyrocket, the number of people who fall below that demarcation is now hovering around 50%.

But if we started seeing rising wages and earnings amongst the working class, that number would drop as more Americans earn enough to join the ranks of taxpayers. In other words, to the extent conservatives are really concerned that as many people as possible have "skin in the game", the current income tax structure in turn gives conservatives an incentive to care about an issue important to liberals: income inequality. One can broaden the tax base by taking more away from the already-poor. But it seems the better option is to broaden the income tax base by broadening the income base -- rendering fewer people poor in the first place.

And aside from the fact that this is simply more humane -- there is a threshold level of income below which we don't think a family is earning enough to support itself to a standard commensurate with our status as the greatest country in the world -- I think the incentive question cuts in its favor as well. I already explained above that the poor already have lots of incentives to care about how government works, and, regardless, it's far cheaper to incentivize them to act anyway. By contrast, there are very few notable points of leverage society has on the rich to get them to care about the living standards of the poor. To the extent that they are genuinely concerned over an emergent democratic majority which pays no taxes (to be honest, I'm dubious that they're actually that concerned), that's a very rare opportunity to make a trade.

* I want to say that, while obviously I strongly disagree with Balko on issues such as this, I have a lot of respect for him as a libertarian who actually puts his money where his mouth is -- he devotes as much if not more attention to aspects of governmental power which harm the poor and marginalized as he does to decrying regulations which hurt primarily the rich and powerful. His work on police brutality and the death penalty, in particular, has been stellar and admirable.

Debtpocalypse Watch: Day Two

As we move into the second day of Speaker John Boehner's furious negotiations with the far-right fringe to secure the votes needed to pass his debt ceiling plan, which would solve this crisis once and for all is a massive waste of time because it's DOA in the Senate, let's examine what is sticking in the right-wing's craw:

The inclusion of the extra money for Pell Grants could cost Republican votes.

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) has compared Pell Grants to “welfare”.

"So you can go to college on Pell Grants — maybe I should not be telling anybody this because it’s turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century," Rehberg told Blog Talk Radio in April. "You can go to school, collect your Pell Grants, get food stamps, low-income energy assistance, Section 8 housing, and all of a sudden we find ourselves subsidizing people that don’t have to graduate from college.”

"Hmmm ... I could vote to save the country from economic ruination. But then poor people might go to college. I hate these tough, grueling political choices."

Meanwhile, word is that Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has flipped to "yes" on the Boehner plan. Flake had called the negotiations over this bill "refreshing" because nobody's children were threatened. Folks think Flake is exaggerating about the bad old days. Tell that to former Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI).

I have to admit, having basically resigned myself to debtpocalypse, I know find this whole charade to be uproariously funny. Boehner is killing himself to crawl across the finish line of a bill which stands no chance of ever becoming law. As Jon Chait points out, Republicans are delusional if they think this will ever pass. It is "like a kidnapper demanding for the release of your child $100,000 and your other child." It's a terrible plan, that will likely be made worse by whatever Boehner will have to do to wrangle those last couple extremist votes, and isn't going anywhere.

"Round Two" Roundup

That will be the last time I refer to the round of 64 as "round two". Stupid play-in games. And stupid Marquette for blowing my bracket halfway to St. Louis. (Also, with respect to the Hoyas: "Actual Jesuits could play better than Georgetown is right now.").

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Grant Hill's response to being thought of as an "Uncle Tom". Ta-Nehisi Coates has characteristically insightful comments.

Minnesota Republicans propose criminalizing possession of money by the poor. No, seriously.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) was for Romneycare before he decided it was a "colossal mistake".

Color me unconvinced, but Ed Kilgore thinks Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) could make a serious play in the Iowa caucuses. If it happens, it won't be because she's less "flawed" than Palin (I'm unconvinced that she's actually more media savvy), but because Republican crazification can never be underestimated.

GreaT post at Post-Bourgie on how being a Black kid growing up on the rough side of Philly turned the writer into a feminist.

Latinos in California are fleeing the GOP in droves. Can the rest of the West be far behind?

Keep the IRS Out of My [Girlfriend's] Uterus!

Snow (Hey Oh!) Roundup

We're fine over here in the wake of the Snowpocalypse. School was canceled yesterday and today, but folks are finally starting to dig out, and we'll be back to normal tomorrow.

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Utah State Rep. wants to ban gay families from participation in all public programs.

Republicans drop "forcible rape" language from their new anti-abortion bill.

Republican presidential candidates graphed on basis of their sanity and their Mormonism.

Meanwhile, Ed Kilgore measures Jon Huntsman's 2012 chances, and finds them severely wanting. He's like Romney, but even easier to call a conservative apostate.

An interview with Dos Equis' World's Most Interesting Man.

Behavioral economists, poor people, and the broken social safety net.

Max Boot chides his fellow right-wingers for pretending there's a viable alternative to ElBaradei.

Where Which Boys Are

Mark Perry (via) of the American Enterprise Institute trumpets a Bureau of Labor Statistics report on continued gender disparities in higher education, less to forward any sensible solutions on sending more men to college than to attack "gender activists" who will presumably ignore the results.

1. This huge gender gap will receive almost no media attention, and will be largely ignored by the gender activists.

2. There will be no calls for government studies, or increased government funding to address the “problem,” and nobody will refer to this gender degree gap as a “national crisis,” the way former astronaut Sally Ride described the gender disparity for jobs in engineering, technology, and science (women hold only 25 percent of those jobs).

3. President Obama will not address the gender degree gap by signing an executive order creating the “White House Council on Men and Boys,” like he did last year for women and girls.

4. Neither Obama, Congress, nor the gender activists in academia will address the gender degree gap by invoking Title IX gender-equity law, like they have proposed using for the gender gap in some math and science programs (see here and here).

5. Nobody will blame the gender degree gap on structural barriers from grades K–12 that discourage men from attending or graduating from college, like they do for explaining the gender gap for women in math and science.

In other words, the standard “disparity-proves-discrimination” dogma, followed by calls for government intervention, will not be applied in this case of a huge gender imbalance in college completion by age 22, because the disparity favors women, not men.

Well, not quite. Because there is are two variables that Mr. Perry is, quite predictably, missing: Race, and class.

Let's be clear -- there is a gender gap in higher education among all races (except Asians -- they're essentially even). A study from the American Council on Education found that in 2007-08, 46% of all undergraduates under age 24 are men (an 8 point gap). For White men, that figure is 47% (so a 6 point gap). For Hispanic men, it's 42% -- a 16 point gap. And for African-American men, it's 41% -- a whopping 18 percentage point gap. (There's also evidence that a college degree is worth less for people of color due to post-graduation discrimination, but that's a separate matter).

As for class, the data shows that the gender gap is intricately connected to income. Again in 2007-08, for the highest income quartile there is no true gender gap at all: 51% of White undergraduates, 52% of Asian undergraduates, and 48% of Hispanic and Black undergraduates are men. For the bottom quartile, by contrast, only 45% of Asian, 44% of White, and 42% of Black and Hispanic undergraduates are men.

The problem, in other words, isn't really with "men" as a class. White men comprise 47% of White college attendees, which isn't bad, given that men are around 49% of the population. Where things get hairy is when we focus in on men of color, and poorer men of all races. I have no trouble asserting that these classes of people are badly failed by our educational system; and that we should be more aggressive in finding tailored solutions for helping them (and there are groups working to address the problem).

But to frame the problem in such a way so as to assert that the men who went to, say, my alma mater (Walt Whitman HS in Bethesda, Maryland) are in a serious way disadvantaged, much less a "second sex", vis-a-vis our female peers borders on delusional -- it obscures far more than it illuminates. The men who are facing discrimination are members of the usual suspects in American society: the poor, and racial minorities. And in general, it is the progressive movement of which those maligned gender-activists are a part that have taken the lead in trying to advocate for these classes.

Andre Bauer Apologizes ... To Animals?

In my roundup yesterday, I noted comments by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer which compared poor people to stray animals (both apparently will breed if you feed them). Today, he issued an apology ... of sorts:

"I never intended to tie people to animals," he said, before opting for a kinder animal metaphor: "If you have a cat, if you take it in your house and feed it and love it, what happens when you go out of town?"

Noting that he has raised money for a group that protects animals, Bauer also said he is "not against animals."

Okay, what? First, note that he apologizes for an animal comparison by proceeding to make the comparison again, with stray cats. But then, in the coup de grace, he makes it clear that he has nothing against animals. And you have to feel bad for the poor animals -- subjected to the indignity of being compared to poor people! It's rather horrible. And rather sociopathic of Lt. Gov. Bauer.*

* Okay, that was out of line. I'd like to apologize to the sociopath community; they don't deserve to be grouped with Bauer (see what I did there?).

Sunday Roundup: Landlord/Tenant Edition

Busy weekend. Our landlord is trying to sell our house, which isn't directly a problem for us -- our lease is unaffected -- except that the real estate agent wants the four of us to live in full "sell the house" mode (every room sparkling clean, willing to vacate at anytime for showings, etc.) for the indefinite future. We're quite willing to be helpful up to a point, perhaps a few days of glittering cleanliness, but we can't effectively vacate the house as law students on any random night (where exactly are we supposed to go in Hyde Park?). I assume they can't force us to do anything, so I think we're in a solid bargaining position -- but the idea of a conflict is stressful to me.

Okay, that was a longer introduction than I intended. Roundup!

* * *

Should we keep "negro" as a census option?

South Carolina likens free lunch programs for impoverished children to feeding stray animals. Why? "Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that."

Anti-Semitic incidents way up in 2009.

Israeli right-wing extremists call Rahm Emanuel a traitor to the Jewish people in response to his upcoming visit to the country.

Cuban and American doctors are cooperating to relieve the Haiti crisis.

Italian gay couple hunger strikes for marriage rights.

Hussein Ibish warns of the perils of certainty regarding the outcome of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Pittsburgh police officers nearly beat a student to death for aggravated possession of Mountain Dew (now they're charging him with resisting arrest).

A judge charged with investigating Judge Sharon Keller's conduct in preventing the filing of a last-minute death penalty appeal has decided that fault mostly fell on the defense team, not the judge. He did find several instances of poor judgment on Keller's part, but recommended she receive no punishment. The report will be delivered to the Commission on Judicial Conduct, which can decide whether to accept, reject, or modify the recommendations.

Blur to Black

I didn't comment on the mini-controversy where Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) seemed to think only Black people are on medicaid. But it fit very nicely with a broader truism among scholars of American race relations, which is that programs which benefit the poor nearly invariably are seen in the public eye as programs benefiting Blacks (think welfare).

And that, in turn, connects with Victor Davis Hanson's interpretation of Obamism:

It works like this: The ghetto resident, the denizen of the barrio, the abandoned and divorced waitress with three young children, can all chart their poverty and unhappiness not to accident, fate, bad luck, bad decisions, poor judgment, illegality or drug use, or simple tragedy, but rather exclusively to a system that is rigged to ensure oppression on the basis of race, class, and gender—often insidious and unfathomable except to the sensitive and gifted academic or community organizer.

So Obama combines the age-old belief that the state is there to level the playing field (rather than protect the rights of the individual and secure the safety of the people from foreign threats), with the postmodern notion that government must recompensate those by fiat on the basis on their race or class or gender. Remember all that, and everything from the Professor Gates incident, to the dutiful attendance at the foot of Rev. Wright to Van Jones become logical rather than aberrant. Michelle Obama could make $300,000 and she will always be more a victim than the Appalachian coal miner who earns $30,000, by virtue of her race and gender.

The problem, as Matt Yglesias pointed out, is that this doesn't jive with any of Obama's actual policy initiatives -- virtually all of which would advantage Mr. Coal Miner over Mrs. Obama. The Obama administration's domestic policy agenda has been singular in its lack of focus on issues of race and racial division (or even, really, racial harmony). It has studiously ducked the issue.

But it doesn't matter, because it never was about what the country (or what Black people) did or didn't do. To a significant swath of the country, all Black political action is presumed to be partisan racial gerrymandering, and all political action geared towards the poor is also presumed to be race-based wealth redistribution. Combine the two prejudices together, and you have a powerful political hurricane.

UPDATE: Also.

IRS Targets a Woman for Being Too Poor

You think I'm kidding (via). The short version is that they took a look at her stated income and decided there was no way for her to survive in Seattle making that much. So they audited her, claiming she owed them $16,000 in back taxes (her annual income is only $18,992).

She couldn't pay it. Her dad, Rob, has run a local painting business, Porcaro Power Painting, for 30 years. He asked his accountant, Driver, for help.

Rachel's returns weren't all that complicated. At issue, though, was that she and her two sons, ages 10 and 8, were all living at her parents' house in Rainier Beach (she pays $400 a month rent). So the IRS concluded she wasn't providing for her children and therefore couldn't claim them as dependents.

She stood to lose what is called earned income tax credit, a refund targeted to help low-income workers. You qualify only if you're working, as Rachel has been.

Driver quickly determined the IRS was wrong in how it was interpreting the tax laws. He sent in the necessary code citations and hoped that would be the end of it.

Instead, the IRS responded by launching an audit of Rachel's parents.

"I was floored," says Rob Porcaro, 59. "I get audited now and then in my business, so I've been through it before. But to have them go after me because of my daughter, well, I've never heard of anything like it."

The IRS eventually backed off the audit, but did insist that Rachel was not supporting her own children. So now, she can't claim them as dependents (and she paid the IRS $1,438, plus penalties and interest, as a result).

The article notes that much of the IRS' "soak the poor" mentality is traceable to a longstanding Republican vendetta against the Earned Income Tax Credit -- a rebate for the working poor. Insisting that it is a vehicle for massive fraud (despite almost certainly costing the government considerably less), they've urged the IRS to target the poor. It's delightfully symbiotic: the GOP shields its rich patrons, and the IRS gets to pick on folks who generally don't have the resources to fight back. Everybody wins, save lady justice.

CNN Covers Michelle Malkin Being an Asshole

I've been chewing over this CNN article about a homeless woman, Henrietta Hughes, whose plea for help from President Obama sparked an outpouring of support from Florida neighbors in the Ft. Myers area. Obviously, I'm glad to see the community respond so quickly once they heard of this woman's plight. At the same time, it's abundantly clear that individual acts of charity are not a systematic solution to the problems people like Ms. Hughes face, and I'm uncomfortable with the triumphalist tone the article is putting out. If she really is the "face of the economic crisis," then we need a policy solution that addresses these issues as a totality. The Florida politicians who are racing to help Ms. Hughes, personally, should likewise be racing to their legislative offices to get some useful bills passed.

Meanwhile, CNN cites extensively to the reaction from conservative bomb-thrower Michelle Malkin, who seems to determined to reenact the Graeme Frost fiasco:

Blogger Michelle Malkin, in a story on the conservative Web site TownHall.com on Wednesday, said that if Hughes "had more time, she probably would have remembered to ask Obama to fill up her gas tank, too."

"The soul-fixer dutifully asked her name, gave her a hug and ordered his staff to meet with her. Supporters cried, 'Amen!' and 'Yes!' " she added.

One reader blasted Hughes' motives and questioned how the homeless woman got to the rally at all.

"How does a 61-year-old homeless woman who's living in a pickup truck with her son JUST HAPPEN to get a ticket so she can VERY PUBLICALLY ask Prez. Obama for a HOUSE? Anyone? Who pushes her up on stage? She's right at the front of the crowd. Did she just happen to get a seat there?" asked reader Erik E.

Malkin responded: "Silence! Do not question Dear Leader. ... Like Mighty Mouse, President Obama is here to save the day. The government is here to help -- and it is your patriotic duty to pay for it all without preconditions."

Malkin's ability to try and slime poorer Americans for having the temerity to ask anything of their government is apparently boundless. But while the nation recoils in disgust from Malkin's sludge, the media is finally starting to catch on that for the Republican base, Malkin's words are standard operating procedure, and worthy of coverage on that ground alone.

Torts Quote of the Day

From Lombard Laws, King Luitprand, Law 136.VII. (A.D. 733):

...no blame should be placed on the man who owns the well [for a tort in which both the perpetrator and victim were third parties] because if we placed the blame on him, no one hereafter would permit other men to raise water from their wells, and since all men cannot have a well, those who are poor would die and those who are traveling through would also suffer need.

I love the matter of fact way the inevitable death of poor people is trotted out as an impact.