A society that worships money is a society in peril

The Birmingham superintendent puts it this way. “The Detroit schools need more money. The solution is not to take it from Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills.” And, again, one wonders where else one would take it from if not from where it is.

The Ann Arbor superintendent ridicules what he describes as “simple-minded solutions [that attempt] to make things equal.”

But of course, the need is not “to make things equal.” He would be correct to call this “simple-minded.” Funding and resources should be equal to the needs that children face. The children of Detroit have greater needs than those of children in Ann Arbor. They should get more than children in Ann Arbor, more than kids in Bloomfield Hills or Birmingham. Calling ethics “simple-minded” is consistent with the tendency to label obvious solutions, that might cost us something, unsophisticated and to favor more diffuse solutions that will cost us nothing and, in any case, will not be implemented….More spending on public education, said [President George H. W. Bush] isn’t “the best answer.” Mr. Bush went on to caution parents of poor children who see money “as a cure” for education problems. “A society that worships money…” said the president, “is a society in peril.”

Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities

Public Support for Abortion Rights and the Perils of “Support”

Jodi Jacobson, at RH Reality Check, talks about the disconnect between the public and politicians on abortion, which touches on something I’ve been emphasizing here.

Consistent rejection by actual voters of attempts to give the state control over women’s bodies tells us three things. One, polls that attempt to divide people into neat boxes such as “pro-choice” and “pro-life” or to measure support for hypothetical restrictions on abortion in generic terms do not reflect how people really feel about safe abortion care. In fact, when asked specifically about who should make decisions on how and when to bear children and under what circumstances to terminate a pregnancy, voters make clear they do not want to interfere in the deeply personal decisions they believe belong between a woman, her partner and family, and her medical advisers, even in cases of later abortion. In short, voters do not want legislators playing god or doctor.

Who knew the reason libertarianism was so noxious was plagiarism?

For reasons that are somewhat baffling, the coverage of Senator Rand Paul’s plagiarism in speeches and writings got wall-to-wall coverage for some time, although it has now died down. I’m not a fan of Paul, and I don’t think this sort of rampant taking of other people’s words and passing them off as his own is acceptable. Yet I find the whole episode strange. Now that it’s over, I wanted to step back to ruminate on the reaction to this and what it means for the left.

Two claims, largely implicit, have become quite common in Democratic-leaning circles, which are in tension.  First, is the idea that libertarians pose an existential threat to the country. Often, libertarian here is used interchangeably for ‘Tea Party,” and while that doesn’t always make sense, it might when it comes to Paul. And while some would make this same claim about the GOP as a whole, libertarians are singled out for particular scorn. Paul, then, is treated as far more threatening that the senior senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell. 

Now, I’m not sure how I would rate the two senators from Kentucky.  I’m sure one could make a case here. But it strikes me that the case is generally presumed, and the differences in terms of whose worse are generally presumed to be really large. This is even more troublesome give that, as minority leader, McConnell likely has a great deal more power in the Senate, regardless of what the comparison might tell us in the abstract.

On Judicial Decisions

Judicial decisions are not what they seem. Their claims are often vastly disproportionate to their effects. The very idea of the decision rests on a model of political power that is rarely realized: one in which authority flows from a hierarchical point, directing the behavior of political institutions as well as ordinary citizens. This model rests on a conception of the sovereign as the decision maker, the person who directs how the rest of the polity will lead their lives. Regardless of whether we put the king or the representative of the people into this role of the sovereign, the model of a single authoritative source of power remains the same. Legal scholars are, for the most part, arguing about how this sovereign should rule. But our legal universe does not work this way.

The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship, Paul W. Kahn

Against “The War Against X”

I’ve been complaining about the framing of the various “War(s) Against X.” So I thought it worth talking a bit about why.

Listening to political discussions, there seem to be wars everywhere. There’s a war on women, a war on voting, a war on the poor. (The right has their wars too, like the war on Christmas, but I assume ones actually related to policy are meant to be taken more seriously.)

To begin with “War on X” rhetoric seems purely defensive.  That is, it is only useful for critiquing Republicans, not for advancing any sort of positive agenda.  In addition, it implies status quo was acceptable .  It suggests the goal is, for example, to stop SNAP cuts, not to ensure food security, or stop new abortion restrictions, not ensure access.  The War Against Voting is about new voting restrictions, but does that mean that only old voting restrictions are acceptable? There’s some implication, maybe, that we are for autonomy, or freedom and equality, or democracy. Implication enough for those who want to find it to hear it, not enough for anyone else to. In reality, I saw innumerable commercials for Terry McAuliffe, and the only thing conveyed was that Ken Cuccinelli was extreme and McAuliffe was in favor of abortion rights in cases of rape and incest.