Zombie jargon for the end of 2008
As this incredibly horrid, wonderful, and plain odd year limps to a close, we should say goodbye to terms that are long past their usefulness. (Snark warning: It's the end of a year, and this is one of the rare times that I will actively make fun of bad ideas.) In my view, the following terms are zombie jargon, terms that by all accounts should be dead but somehow are still walking around. Are your brains being eaten by any of them?* Speaking of brains, let's start out with brain-based learning. All learning is brain-based, but neuropsychology is not sufficiently advanced for anyone to say with certainty what instructional methods are tied to what happens in our brains. This is too often connected with pseudoscience and used to sell various products and programs.
* Let's move from brains to classrooms: sage-on-the-stage vs. guide-on-the-side. If you can figure out a classroom where there is either no structure at all or children don't have their own ideas, please go visit a real one. Until then, please don't bother me with false dichotomies. All good teachers have some structure in the classroom. All good teachers work with the fact that students are human beings with their own motives, moods, and so forth.
* But the fact that students are different is sometimes reified into categories with little research support, such as learning styles. My educational psychology colleagues tell me that there is no research support for claims that a particular student will inherently learn better in some presumed "mode," let alone support for the constructs of various proposed modes. And it's a good thing, too: if some of us truly were verbal or kinesthetic learners rather than being able to absorb visual information, the roads would be much more dangerous than they already are.
* Along the lines of learning styles is multiple intelligence, which is Howard Gardner's assay of our internal baloney meter. If you've paid money to read one of his books on the topic, you failed the test. In his defense, I know that he developed the term in trying to address the king of all zombie jargon in education, intelligence. But I'm not sure if it makes problems any better if you multiply them.
* But let's move from psychology to policy pablum. If you hear policymakers talk about world class standards, make sure to run as fast as you can before they open up your skull. I don't know if my children and their peers need to meet standards that would work in Quito, Buenos Aires, Accra, or Beijing, but I'd settle for their meeting MIT standards, Oberlin standards, and UC Irvine standards, and for their being able to make friends and work with peers from Quito, Buenos Aires, Accra, or Beijing.
* And now that we are in the 21st century, can we stop talking about terms such as 21st century skills as if being able to read and knowing a bit of science, math, and history are somehow obsolete?
* While all of the terms listed above should have been dead a few years ago, I want to add another one that's freshly dead (or should be): data-driven decision-making [TFT's personal favorite term to deride]. This is not an argument against using data to make decisions but against using the term "data-driven decision-making" to avoid talking about hard decisions: what should we be teaching children, who has priority on resources, is a teacher or principle thinking that their job is working hard instead of teaching, etc. It is a term used by technocrat wannabes, the ones who would have talked about zero-based budgeting in the 1960s or time-and-motion studies in the 1920s.
12/31/08
Let's Kill Some Words!
Sherman Dorn is a brilliant professor and editor. He likes to do some debunking now and again. Here he debunks a few of my favorites:
Hertzberg On Obama/Warren
Rick Hertzberg is a favorite of mine. I almost always agree with him (being a liberal atheist and all), and I have posted many pieces by Rick here on TFT. I post this one because, even though I agree with it, I disagree. "Pastor"(scare quotes!)Warren should not have been invited.
Three Strikes (Strike Two: Pastor Rick)
Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his Inauguration has produced anger and/or hurt feelings in many liberal and/or gay precincts. It’s hard to say this without sounding condescending, but I understand these feelings and sympathize with them.
Warren turns out to be somewhat worse than I thought he was back when, a few months ago, I rashly likened him to Henry Ward Beecher. I hadn’t fully appreciated that he contends Jews and atheists are automatically hellbound, for example. Or that he has declared assassination admissible when used against “evildoers,” such as the president of Iran. Or that, while he says gays are welcome to attend services at his Saddleback megachurch, he doesn’t let them (closet cases excepted, presumably) become members. (He doesn’t let heterosexuals who are living together in “sin” join, either.)
Nevertheless, the invitation to Warren looks to me like another of Obama’s brilliant chess moves.[emphasis mine; this is the part I agree with]
Warren, first of all, is much, much less of a jerk than, say, Pat Robertson or James Dodson. He is polite and civil to people who are polite and civil to him, even people who (like Obama) disagree with him on subjects like whether or not abortion and same-sex marriage should be illegal. He recognizes that global warming, environmental degradation, gross economic inequality, and poverty are actual problems, not just excuses for godless liberals to impose big government programs. He does not go on television to fleece the faithful with “prayer requests.”
The President-elect is doing what he has said he would do from the beginning: he is reaching across lines of identity and ideology. Remember those wonderful lines from the 2004 keynote? “We worship an awesome God in the blue states… and, yes, we have some gay friends in the red states.” (I don’t worship any gods, whether awesome or lame, but when Obama said this I didn’t feel in the least slighted.) In the case of the Warren invitation, the reaching across is neither more nor less than an expression of inclusion and respect in the context of a ritual of the American civic religion. It is not an offer to surrender or compromise some principle. It is not a preemptive concession in some arcane negotiation. If anything, it suggests that when and if he does negotiate with the Christianist right, he will negotiate from strength, not weakness.
The Warren invitation should make it politically easier for Obama to change federal policies in an equal-rights direction where gays and lesbians are concerned, much as retaining Robert Gates at the Pentagon will make it politically easier for him to manage a withdrawal from Iraq. What the Warren invitation does is to show evangelicals that when (and if, but let’s hope there won’t be any ifs) Obama scraps “don’t ask, don’t tell,” starts providing federal support for contraception, and undoes the international “gag rule” on abortion counseling, he’s doing these things out of his sense of the general good, not lobbing ordnance in a culture war.
Warren supported Proposition 8, the California anti-same-sex-marriage initiative. Worse, he likens same-sex marriage to marriage between siblings, marriage between an adult and a child, and polygamy. But, according to beliefnet.com, he also says that he regards divorce as a much bigger threat than gay marriage—“a no-brainer,” he says. Also, he appears to be open to, maybe even supportive of, civil unions—something that Obama, and organized gaydom, ought to put to the test.
Warren has said that he has lots of gay friends. That’s easy to make fun of, but it’s not meaningless. In Gus Van Sant’s terrific film “Milk,” Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk helps defeat a 1978 anti-gay California proposition by rallying large numbers of gays to come out of the closet and make themselves known to friends, family, and co-workers. People who have gay friends have a hard time hating gay people. Eventually they have a hard time hating gayness itself.
Although Obama did a little better among evangelicals than did the last couple of Democratic nominees, the organized evangelical movement is never going to support him. But either it can oppose him passionately, contemptuously, and across the board, or it can oppose him respectfully, selectively, and without zeal, cooperating with him in some areas. Obama’s Warren gesture should nudge some non-negligible number of evangelicals in the second direction. It might even help cool their social-issue fervor.
I’m especially inclined to see this as a real possibility after my very interesting and enjoyable recent visit to Covenant College, in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, just across the Tennessee border from Chattanooga. Covenant is no Bob Jones University—dancing is permitted, the dress code is relaxed, and check out the school Drama Association’s latest production!—but it is a stronghold of evangelical Christianity. (Motto: “In All Things Christ Pre-Eminent”.) Judging from a show of hands I asked for, the people who came to my talk all pretty much unanimously believe in a personal God who has opinions about which human sexual practices are naughty, and which are nice. Be that as it may, I liked them all—students, faculty, and the college president, Niel Nielson—very much. They were polite, serious, gracious, and un-self-righteous. I don’t know how typical the students I talked with were, but they were eager to discuss every question from “Is there a God?” to “At what point does the moral value of a human fetus exceed that of a live chimpanzee?” I got the impression that many of them are embarrassed by the likes of Dobson, Robertson, and Sarah Palin, and have no wish to be lumped in with them. Several volunteered to me that they had voted for Obama. Many more seemed fascinated by him and glad that he views them as citizens of the same country that he is going to be President of. When we discussed gay issues, it seemed clear to me that they were earnestly struggling with the contradiction between, on the one hand, the Bible’s supposed anti-gay fulminations and, on the other hand, their own increasingly inescapable knowledge that (a) being gay is not a “lifestyle choice” and (b) there is no danger of gays “recruiting” straights, let alone recruiting so many that the human race dwindles into nonexistence.
These students live in a bubble, and they know it. But then, people like me live in a bubble, too, and, on the whole, we don’t know it. From my angle, of course, our bubble looks bigger and better. Theirs: a constricted, six-thousand-year-old world ruled by an incorrigibly small-minded God, the secrets of which are to be found in a black-bound anthology of unreliably translated old tribal stories, poems, directives, and tracts. Ours: an unimaginably immense, unimaginably ancient universe ruled by no one, the wonders and beauties of which are continually being revealed to us through our senses and our minds. The more frank and friendly conversation there is between the two bubbles, the better. (Don’t take my word for it— take Melissa Etheridge’s.)
Being the opening act at Obama’s Inauguration will give Warren a boost within the evangelical world, at the expense of the real baddies (or the real worsies). It will have a calming effect on evangelicals. The rest of us—liberals, gays, secularists, unorthodox Jews, non-Christianist Christians—ought to stay calm, too. We can settle for the rest of the ceremony, including Obama’s address and Joseph Lowery’s benediction. To say nothing of the substantive changes the Obama Administration will bring.
Bob Reich: Just A Little Tenderness
Bob's call for decency:
Thoughts on the End of a Hell of a YearI don't know if Bob ever reads this blog, but if he does, if you do, Bob, thanks.
The biggest thing to happen to me this year was the birth of my first grandchild, a little girl named Ella. I know this kind of thing happens all the time and frankly I get bored with people who go all gushy about the birth of kids or grandkids.
I’m bringing Ella up not so much because she’s special -- of course she is -- but because she was born right in the middle of the worst economic downturn in my lifetime and probably yours, and maybe even hers. Ella came with a crash.
Like almost everyone else, I’ve lost a big chunk of my savings this year. And the house I bought here in Berkeley at the very top of the housing boom is probably worth a lot less than I paid for it. I’m not too worried about my job because I have tenure here at the University of California, although maybe I should worry because the state is technically bankrupt. Still, I'm one of the lucky ones.
Yet all of this seems somehow beside the point, relative to Ella.
Having kids or grandkids expands your focus and also your time horizon. You pay a bit less attention to what the Dow is likely to do over the next quarter and more to the underlying wealth of the nation. By that I don't mean just its gross domestic product but also its gross domestic decency, if there were such a measure: The quality of our public schools and of our atmosphere, the extent of our openness and generosity toward one another, our national promise of opportunity to all. You find yourself less interested in the gossip surrounding Bernie Madoff or Rod Blagojevich than in the larger questions they raise about private greed and public morality.
Alright, maybe I am going all gushy. The point is, it's the Ellas of the world we're fighting for. This Mini-Depression is causing a lot of pain, to be sure, but it will be over in a year or three. Yet what kind of economy will we have on the other side? Will we have a more just society?
Which brings me to the end of the year. I wish you not just a happy and prosperous new year. On that score, 2009 may be something of a bummer. I wish you and your kids and grandkids, and Ella, something more -- a decent, generous, and humane future.
12/30/08
Posse Comitatus: Repealed (apparently)
This is a bit scary because we are nearing the conditions necessary:
Report argues for domestic police role for military
by Jay McDonough
The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878, just after the end of the Reconstruction following the Civil War, and prohibited the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement purposes except in very rare cases. Per Wikipedia, the Act was a political concession to Southern states, withdrawing the Union military forces that policed ex-Confederate states during the Reconstruction.
A couple months ago, the Department of Defense announced it was assigning a full-time Army unit to be on call to facilitate military cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security in the event of another terrorist attack.A report in the Army Times last month first brought the domestic deployment to light. The Army's 3rd Infantry Division 1st Brigade Combat Team became the first unit assigned permanently to Northern Command.This clearly raises issues with respect to the Posse Comitatus Act, but even more troubling are recent reports a U.S. Army War College professor has written a report asserting military intervention would be required in a number of domestic scenarios.
According to the Army Times report, the Team would be on-call to respond in the event of a natural disaster or terror attack anywhere in the country, or they could be used to "help with civil unrest and crowd control." (Link)The author warns potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, "unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters." The situation could deteriorate to the point where military intervention was required, he argues.The author of the report notes the proposals are his alone and don't represent U.S. policy, but it's also certain the report has been read throughout the Defense Department. But economic collapse? Loss of functioning political order? Purposeful domestic resistance? That's one terrifying slippery slope. And not in keeping with American values.
Yglesias: STFU!
I love Matt. He's smart and says what he thinks. He has a post up about "personnel quality" that you should read; the comments are the best part. As usual, MY's readers tear him a new one due to his penchant for siding with the union busters and the blame-the-teachers folks. Here is the post:
Update: I just checked back and Skeptic has another comment. Who is this Skeptic? I like....
By Request: Personnel QualityAnd my favorite comment by a MY reader:
I liked NS’s other question too:Why is “finding better teachers” such a preoccupation among self-described education reformers? Of course, we’d have a better education system if our teachers were better. We’d also have a better military if our soldiers were better and a better health care system if our doctors and nurses were better. Why is education the only policy area where “find better people” is treated as a workable solution?With regard to soldiers, I would reject the premise. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War there was a very low level of interest in joining the United States military and consequently in order to maintain the required overall force size it was necessary to make recruiting standards quite low and to be pretty lax about who you would keep on. The rebuilding of the quality of the personnel employed by the military over the course of the 1980s and 1990s is one of the great prides of the officers who were involved. And when the Iraq War was leading to a personnel crunch and moves toward diluting recruiting standards there was, rightly, a great deal of hand-wringing over it. Concern about personnel quality is also one of, if not the, main reason why the military brass is generally very hostile to the idea of conscription and this is also why we’ve encouraged our NATO allies to abolish conscript and build smaller, higher-quality, more professionalized forces.
Quality of personnel should always be a concern across public services. Some cities, for example, have trouble offering police officers salaries that are as high as what’s offered in neighboring suburbs. This tends to lead to problems with the quality of the staff available to urban police departments which, in turn, makes it more difficult to keep crime under control.
With regard to teachers, though, it’s worth trying to be more specific since the debate has focused on a couple of particular points. In the United States, we tend to require teachers to do a lot of preemptive qualifying in terms of getting themselves certified. And then after a few years of teaching, they become eligible for tenure status. But we do have some fairly extensive experience with teachers going into the classroom without traditional certification. And the evidence suggests that such teachers are basically just as effective as the teachers who do have the traditional certification. The evidence also suggests that while teachers tend to get a lot more effective after their first couple of years of experience, they don’t get more and more and more effective as further time passes. Thus, the general shape of the teacher quality reform proposals is to (a) relax the preemptive screening so as to make it easier for anyone with a college degree to get into the classroom, (b) make the tenure decision more strictly tied to student achievement, and then (c) take advantage whatever increase in your potential labor force step (a) has given you to make it possible to in step (b) dump the bottom X% of the worst-performing teachers. To all of this I would be strongly inclined to add (d) start paying people more to further increase the size of the labor pool and make step (c) all the more effective.
But the need to have good people doing important public services is by no means unique to teaching and it certainly applies to the military.
Skeptic Says:Now go read it.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I’m sorry, that’s just utterly utterly dumb. Stupid. Pathetic.
You want good education, lower your classroom size. That means more teachers, smaller classes. Invest in your students. Invest in resources for the school - music programs, athletic, drama, shop, computers, you name it. Establish a rock solid basic curriculum and then enrich it with lots of electives. Monitor your students performance and then establish streams or programs to encourage and support the brilliant, provide remedial help for those who did a bit of a boost in certain areas, and a low end stream. Identify and remove the disruptive. All of this takes money, patience and a genuine investment. Not something that Americans have a lot of interest in these days.
Much easier to simply go for the crack fix. I mean the quick fix.
Oh, and I certainly do love the ‘break the teachers union’. Yeah, because that’s certainly going to encourage quality teachers.
Update: I just checked back and Skeptic has another comment. Who is this Skeptic? I like....
Skeptic Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Yeah, that’s it. It’s all about bad teachers. Get rid of the bad teachers, and the system will magically right itself and we’ll all be rubbing each other off in happy teddy bear land. Good for you, hope that works out for you all.
Yes, political correctness is at fault. People who are good at math and science just get sick of being told that the N*gg*r word is unacceptable and that you can’t sexually harass the prettier girl students.
Now, I don’t know if my educational experience is similar to most Americans. But here goes.
I went to elementary school, grades 1 through 6, a different teacher in year. Six teachers over six years.
Then I went to Junior High, a curriculum of 6 courses per year, with a different teacher specializing in the different subjects - math, history, etc. There was overlap, different teachers taught multiple classes, but I figure I was exposed to a minimum of 6 to 12 teachers, over three years and 18 courses.
High school, three more years, but increasing numbers of elective courses to choose from. Say 12 to 18 teachers.
All in all, I figure twelve years of schooling had me exposed for substantial periods to 24 to 36 teachers.
Were some of them awful? Sure, I remember a math teacher in high school who couldn’t find his ass with a flashlight. I remember a horiffic elementary school teacher who would pull kids pants down and spank them savagely in front of the class. Of the 24 to 36 I’d have said maybe 4 or 5 were truly terrible. Roughly 15% say, give or take.
That seems to be about average for the population. You look at any trade and the bottom fifteen per cent tend to be major league screw ups.
Were there good teachers? Yep. Not all of them. I remember a couple of really brilliant university professor level high school english teachers, a great biology teacher, a really sweet elementary school teacher. Maybe 4 or 5.
And the rest? Solidly unexceptional.
Now, let me make a few points. Were there bad teachers? Sure there were. But they were the exception, the minority, and for the most part, I was exposed to enough different teachers, we all were, that a few screw ups didn’t really affect the quality of our education. We as students could transcend them. It would have been nice to have been rid of them, but on the other hand, if they hadn’t been there, I don’t think it would have made much difference.
Simply put getting rid of all the bad teachers probably isn’t going to make all that big a difference. There likely aren’t all that many of them, no more than 15% to 20% say, and students are exposed to enough different teachers that any handicap they leave can likely be overcome. Purging the system produces at best incremental benefits rather than transformation.
What about getting better teachers? Well, like I said, there were four or five brilliant teachers and they made a real difference in my life. My education would have been so much better if there’d been eight or ten or a dozen brilliant teachers. Sure.
But on the other hand, my brother, with different skills and interests went through the same schooling and many of the same teachers that I did. Some of the ones I found brilliant made no impact on him, or he even disliked them. He found others to be gifted.
So what makes a teacher really really good for students is a highly subjective thing between the teacher and the student. It’s not like there’s some external board of education monitor who ranks the quality of a teacher. It’s the ability to reach out to students, and all teachers and students are different. It’s possible that even some of the horrific ones were able to make a big positive difference to some students.
But assume we could find some objective method to winkle out the diamonds. Sure. How do we find these diamonds and how do we keep them? More importantly, how do we keep them?
Human nature being what it is, people want two things: Money and security. There’s probably other ways to phrase it, but there you go. We like to talk about investments in stocks and bonds and land and crap like that. But skills are investments, time is an investment, a career is an investment.
A person has maybe 20 to 40 years of working life in them, and they’d like a decent standard of living and a decent retirement. The job, the career, is an investment in both the personal present and in the future, in living, in raising kids, in sickness and health, in retirement. People with options, with skill and talent, choose their careers as investments.
They want a good wage, they want to be able to make a nice living. Maybe there are other thing involved, they may not require top dollar. But on the other hand, they don’t want poverty. And they want some assurance of stability. You go to school invest four years in an education degree, you want some reasonable undertaking that you’re going to be able to recoup that investment, some likelihood that the investment over time will enable you to buy a home, raise a family, have vacations, etc. Sometimes people are prepared to trade a bit of one for a bit more of the other. More money less security is a good deal if you’re young and have options. Less money but more security is a better deal if you’re in an unstable environment. One or the other is not a good deal. Some combination is preferable. And the best is reasonably good provisions for both.
So what’s the idiots reform package - Teachers are overpaid. Uh huh. Okay, drop the compensation, or keep it stable, that will attract people like flies. Teachers have too much security, let’s make it easier to be rid of them and let’s abandon all hope of long term security. Yes, let’s make teachers vulnerable to termination from incompetent or arbitrary administrators, school board officials, angry parents, etc. Let’s strip collective bargaining and union protection rights, and have them stand like peons in the system.
Well, listen up. That sort of model isn’t going to attract the best and brightest. The best and brightest, being bestest and brightly usually have other options, or are motivated to seek out other options. And they pretty much will. Remember, the average lifespan of a teacher is five years. Most teachers leave the profession after five years. That’s a pretty high attrition rate, they’re already voting with their feet. Someone with options, they’ll go and look for a better investment.
So who does take that crap deal? The opposite of the best and brightest. The average, the dull, the plodding, the ones with fewer or no other options.
Way to go. Well meaning idiocy once again improves the American school system.
12/29/08
12/28/08
Delaney Bramlett: R.I.P.
Rock songwriter Delaney Bramlett dies in LA at 69
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Singer-songwriter-producer Delaney Bramlett, who penned such classic rock songs as "Let it Rain" and worked with musicians George Harrison and Eric Clapton, has died. He was 69.
Bramlett died Saturday shortly before 5 a.m. at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles as a result of complications from gallbladder surgery, his wife Susan Lanier-Bramlett said.
Born in Mississippi, Bramlett enjoyed a career in the music business that spanned 50 years. With his then-wife Bonnie Lynn, he created the Southern blues-rock band Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. The group opened for Blind Faith, which featured British guitarist Clapton, in 1969.
He is perhaps best known for standards such as "Superstar," co-written with Leon Russell, which was recorded by Usher, Luther Vandross, Bette Midler, The Carpenters and most recently, Sonic Youth, in a version featured on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack of the movie "Juno."
He co-wrote "Let it Rain" with Clapton, who also recorded it, and "Never Ending Song of Love," which was recorded by more than 100 artists including Ray Charles, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Patty Loveless and Dwight Yoakam.
During his career, he performed, co-wrote or recorded with stars such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Dave Mason, Billy Preston, the Everly Brothers and Mac Davis. He also produced artists including Etta James and Elvin Bishop.
He recently released an album, "A New Kind of Blues," on independent label Magnolia Gold Records.
12/25/08
A Christmas Story
h/t DownWithTyrannyThe House that Jack Built
Stirling Newberry (Miscellany)
This is the house that Jack bought.
This is the mortgage that paid for the house that Jack bought.
This is the fraud, that the mortgage processor committed to get the loan, that paid for the house that Jack bought.
This is the bank, that dished off the loan, that was obtained by fraud, to pay for the house that Jack bought.
This is the quant, who sliced up the loan, by fudging the numbers, so he could take the dished loan, that was obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, the Jack bought.This is the dealer, who without checking the numbers, shipped off the tranches, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, that was obtained by fraud, to pay for the house that Jack bought.
This is the monoliner, that papered the tranches, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house that Jack bought.This is the investment bank, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house that Jack bought.
This is hedge fund, that sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.This is the tax break, that fed to the hedge fund, that sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.
This is deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.This is the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.
This is the downturn, that followed the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.This is the takedown, that accelerated the downturn, that followed the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.
This is the pink slip, because of the Takedown, that accelerated the downturn, that followed the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.This is Jack's layoff, that is on the pink slip, because of the Takedown, that accelerated the downturn, that followed the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.
This is the foreclosure, brought on by Jack's layoff, that is on the pink slip, because of the Takedown, that accelerated the downturn, that followed the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.This is the Fed, that bollixed the policy, to deal with the foreclosure, brought on by Jack's layoff, that is on the pink slip, because of the Takedown, that accelerated the downturn, that followed the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.
This is the Congress, that backed up the Fed, that bollixed the policy, to deal with the foreclosure, brought on by Jack's layoff, that is on the pink slip, because of the takedown, that accelerated the downturn, that followed the War, that ate up the money, that ballooned out the deficit, caused by the tax breaks, that fed to the hedge fund, sold the Default Swap, that securitized the the foreclosure, shipped off by the dealer, with the the quant's fudged up numbers, from the dished out loan, obtained by fraud, to pay for the house, that Jack bought.This is Bush, they still let him fuck things up. Maybe it would have been different if he had been impeached. We will never know, now will we.
I don't know about you, but Jack is looking pretty fucked right now.
12/24/08
Elf Local 315
From McSweeney's:
Finally, shop stewards continue to disappear at an alarming rate. The latest to go missing is Blotto Bugberry, who vanished without a trace on November 28. The usual rumors of elf bells turning up in reindeer droppings are already making the rounds, but the safety commissioner has found no evidence to support such claims and urges all members to refrain from alarmist talk.
ELF UNION
NEWSLETTER:
DECEMBER 2008.
BY MIKE RICHARDSON-BRYANMeeting Update
Over 300 members attended the meeting of November 15, 2008. Most were clearly drunk, and some continued to drink throughout the meeting. Boisterous refrains of bawdy drinking songs did little to expedite union business.
We heard a special presentation by Huffy Hugabug of the Pixie Dust Abuse Hotline. Members were instructed how to recognize the signs of pixie-dust addiction. Half an hour was wasted searching the room for a sample dime bag that predictably went missing during the look-and-learn segment of the presentation.
It was once again proposed that we amend Section 29 of the constitution. Several members convincingly argued that a strident call for the destruction of Israel has no place in the constitution of a labor union. As usual, Tinky Muhammad al-Tunklenut rose to the defense of Section 29, and the matter was referred to committee yet again.
Ten new members took the Toymaker's Oath. Three current members were presented with their journeyman letters. One member was subjected to a prolonged chair beating for reasons not reflected in the minutes.Notices
The next general meeting will be held on Friday, January 16, 2009, at 7 p.m. in the Lodge Hall.
The Occupational Health and Safety Committee will offer a ladder-safety refresher course on Friday, January 9, 2009, at 9 a.m. in the Lodge Hall. All members less than 5 apples tall must attend in order to maintain their certification.
The Elfwives Auxiliary will hold an all-day bake sale on Saturday, January 27, 2009, at the North Pole Fire Hall. Proceeds will go to benefit the Elf Amputee Society, the Severe Burns Survivors Network, and the Belt Sander Accident Awareness Coalition.
The Elvish Mental Health Society will present a workshop on multiple-personality disorder on Friday, January 23, 2009, at 7 p.m. in the Lodge Hall. The guest speaker will be Dr. Fig Foofaraw, best-selling author of Me, My Elf, and I.
The annual toy drive has once again been canceled, due to outright hostility and some arson.Workplace Health and Safety Update
The following elves were killed on the job in November:
* Durnk Dumblebum: overcome by fumes in the Play-Doh silo
* Pongo Plumfoot: asphyxiated on the Mr. Potato Head line after becoming lodged in the ear chute
* Nudge Nickwick: death by the Marburg virus, contracted during research-and-development work on the Actual Barrel of Actual Monkeys prototype
* Snuggy Snufflebottom: succumbed to Nerf lung
* Nobby Niblick: thrown from a rocking horse into an unattended punch press
* Pip Pennypants: incinerated in a suspicious Easy-Bake Oven accident
* Boffo Boggins: mauled by a feral Furby
In addition, Cubby Crumbpot, Pudge Proudtoe, and Winky Whippoorwill were all killed in the deplorable nail-gun fight of November 3.
Finally, shop stewards continue to disappear at an alarming rate. The latest to go missing is Blotto Bugberry, who vanished without a trace on November 28. The usual rumors of elf bells turning up in reindeer droppings are already making the rounds, but the safety commissioner has found no evidence to support such claims and urges all members to refrain from alarmist talk.Ask the Expert
Each month, our own resident expert on labor law, Conker Cobnobble, answers letters from members just like you.
Dear Conker,
I'm having trouble with a co-worker. He's not a bad elf, but he's always using my tools and then misplacing them. Should I hire a goblin to kill the bastard, or should I do it myself?
Yours truly,
Short and Angry
Dear Short and Angry,
Killing a co-worker is something we all enjoy, and no self-respecting elf should pass up the opportunity to thin the herd himself. If detection is an issue, however, then hiring a pro is perfectly acceptable. If you do decide to go with a goblin, remember that it's half now, half later, no exceptions. Just to be sure, you might want to hire a troll to whack the goblin later on, because you know what those guys are like when they hit the pub with a pocketful of blood money. Better torch the pub, too.
- - - -
Do you have a question for Conker? Send it to Ask the Expert, Elf Local 315, Lodge Hall, North Pole.
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Unions: Good For The Economy, Good For Christmas!
For you union busters out there:
The economy as a whole requires a large number of people making decent wages and thus having disposable income to spend, while individually companies would like to lower their own labor costs by paying their workers as little as possible. In a sense, companies that pay good wages subsidize those that don't, at least until a tipping point is reached and the pool of well-paid workers is no longer large enough to support poorly paid production. Individual self-interest leads to collective ruin, and it is important to note that both cycles are self-reinforcing, as the worse things get, the more people wish to hoard and the more companies look to cut costs. This is probably why anarchy never really caught on as a political option.
The Economic Case for Unions, (and how they help us all)
By BJ
In economics, you are taught to look at the labor market as though it was no different from any other market, in which the forces of supply and demand determine the price and quantity. In a perfect world, competition would result in everyone earning their marginal product of labor, a fancy way of saying you’d get paid what you’re worth.
Nearly every conservative rant against unions or raising the minimum wage begins with that assumption. This would be a good example of that. Living wage legislation is “little more than another welfare program”, and accepting unionization akin to drinking kool-aid at Jonestown. After all, if you allow for competition, everyone gets paid what they are actually worth and minimum wage laws and unions interfere with that, right?
Of course, the world is far from perfect, and a large part of the reason it isn’t is that one of the underlying assumptions of a competitive economic system that results in an equitable and fair distribution of resources is that the parties to every contract are equals.
An employer-employee relationship is not one of equals, particularly when you are job-hunting. Rare are the times where the power is tilted the individual employee’s way. A year or two ago in Fort McMurray would be an example, where both the cost of living, isolation, and surplus of very high-paying tar sands jobs meant that companies like Wal-Mart found themselves forced to limit their hours of operation and possibly be forced to shut down due to a lack of people willing to work for their incredibly low prices. Of course, with the collapse in oil prices, that may not be the case much longer. More typically these days, one of the stories at memeorandum a couple of days ago noted that for 8,000 positions in the Obama administration, there are 300,000 applicants. In environments like that, what kind of bargaining power do you think the average worker has compared to their employer?
The more common reality of the employer-employee relationship can be seen in today’s news with the announcement that one of the most notoriously anti-union corporations on the planet, Wal-Mart, is settling a whole host of class-action lawsuits brought against it by its employees for multiple violations of nearly every labor law and all of the even minimal obligations our anti-union conservative friend above said that employers do owe their employees.
An employee making minimum wage or little better is in no position to bargain effectively with a multi-billion-dollar multinational corporation like Wal-Mart, and, as is the case in most inherently unequal relationships, abuse tends to follow. As much as our conservative friend bemoans the mostly fictitious lack of accountability for union employees who do slovenly work and violate regulations, the fact that it is nearly impossible for individual workers to hold their employers accountable for violations should lead to the same conclusion, committing of these violations with increasing frequency, as today’s Wal-Mart decision shows.
(And before someone blathers on about how this decision shows that Wal-Mart has been held accountable and thus individual employees do have some recourse, please note that the above cases were all class-action lawsuits, brought collectively against the corporation, and even then with considerable outside assistance. And I’m willing to bet that very few of those employees who brought up the abuse cases against Wal-Mart still work there. One employee versus the corporation equals bug-squashing time. Plus, let us not forget that most of those labor laws exist in the first place due to the battling of striking workers from back in the days when such things were illegal and worthy of having the police and National Guard called out to bust up and occasionally kill said strikers. Or, “another form of welfare” forced upon us all by the damned socialists.)
Anyway, back to main point, collective bargaining is born to offset the power of large employers versus tiny employees in labor negotiations. One employee can do very little to affect a large corporation, but all of them combined can at least force a Mexican stand-off by shutting down its operations. Unions put the relationship between employer and employee on a more level footing, and are therefore the proper economic answer to corporations in moving towards a more equitable and efficient distribution of resources.
Read Jonathon Cohn’s article on the auto union’s evolution and note the conditions on the factory floors before the unions were recognized. Not too surprisingly, employees lived in fear of their supervisor’s capriciousness, particularly when times were rough and jobs were tight. And it required government legislation before the unionization efforts were finally recognized and the start of halfway sane labor laws began to take shape.
Cohn’s article also notes that the UAW was behind nearly all of the progressive “welfare-state” reforms of the intervening decades up to the 1970’s, which I figure explains a great deal of the Republican anger towards them. That legacy is a large part of what the non-unionized work force owes them. Most of the labor laws Wal-Mart is paying off former employees for violating wouldn’t even exist without the unions efforts.
The second part of what non-unionized employees owe the unions is the competition they provide. Or perhaps that should be worded, the fear of competition they provide. From Cogitamus, this story from the LA Times:But what the foreign car companies want is to level -- which is to say, wipe out -- the union. They currently discourage their workforce from organizing by paying wages comparable to the Big Three's UAW contracts. In fact, Toyota's per-hour wages are actually above UAW wages.To which Sir Charles adds:
However, an internal Toyota report, leaked to the Detroit Free Press last year, reveals that the company wants to slash $300 million out of its rising labor costs by 2011. The report indicated that Toyota no longer wants to "tie [itself] so closely to the U.S. auto industry." Instead, the company intends to benchmark the prevailing manufacturing wage in the state in which a plant is located. The Free Press reported that in Kentucky, where the company is headquartered, this wage is $12.64 an hour, according to federal labor statistics, less than half Toyota's $30-an-hour wage. If the companies, with the support of their senators, can wipe out or greatly weaken the UAW, they will be free to implement their plan.In other words, non-union workers benefit by the very existence of the threat to unionize. Companies frequently pay wages that are only slightly below the union scale to keep workers from organizing. In the construction industry, it is not unusual for employers to pay a higher take home wage than union workers get while providing much more modest (or no) benefits. Such a strategy works particularly well with young men, who are by definition immortal, and immigrant labor, which often wants to maximize money that can be sent home to waiting families.The anti-union forces like to add the legacy costs of the Big Three to the current workforces compensation to make their case that union employees are overpaid. As noted above, the reality is that they are no better paid than their competitors, because if they were, resentment and envy would likely start turning to thoughts of opportunity, and all the anti-union propaganda and corporate-friendly legislation in the world wouldn't have kept the foreign auto plants non-unionized for long. Their good wages are a testement to the union's power.
Eliminate the union "threat" and there is no reason for an employer to be so generous. What people seem to fail to comprehend is that any concession made in a unionized environment can be met and exceeded in a nanosecond, completely unilaterally by the non-union sector. . . .
Mark my words -- if the UAW were to cease to be a viable entity because of what the Republicans are doing, the wages of the workers at the foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. will be cut in half within a short time -- exactly the wrong recipe for an economy that is seeking to recover.
Yesterday, Fester noted the “Bugger Thy Neighbour” philosophy driving individuals these days, where it is collectively in our best interests for people with disposable income to spend it, but individually prudent to hoard your own money for the plausible bad times ahead. Over at The Beav’ is the corporate version of said philosophy. The economy as a whole requires a large number of people making decent wages and thus having disposable income to spend, while individually companies would like to lower their own labor costs by paying their workers as little as possible. In a sense, companies that pay good wages subsidize those that don't, at least until a tipping point is reached and the pool of well-paid workers is no longer large enough to support poorly paid production. Individual self-interest leads to collective ruin, and it is important to note that both cycles are self-reinforcing, as the worse things get, the more people wish to hoard and the more companies look to cut costs. This is probably why anarchy never really caught on as a political option.
Governments can't, or at least in my opinion shouldn't, be able to force people to spend or invest their wealth, though they do fiddle with interest rates and tax codes to make certain options more attractive. On the other hand, minimum wage laws and allowing the formation of unions, (as it allows the formation of corporations), are well within government's mandate, and should allow for some collective action and more sound economic bargaining to soften the impact of the coming downturn.
Merry Chri......F*ck It!
Finally, an argument against Christmas from a socioeconomic perspective. It's a long one, but well worth the Scroogie read...
Why I Hate Christmas
The Grinch has it right
James S. Henry, The New Republic Published: December 31, 1990
When I was a kid in Minnesota my family had a huge Scandinavian feast every Christmas Eve, complete with two dozen relatives, three feet of snow, a mountainous evergreen trimmed to the top, a six-course dinner with lutefisk and turkey and eight or ten pies, long-winded after-dinner stories about baseball and World War II, and, of course, lots of brightly wrapped presents. It has taken me three decades of rigorous economics training and life on the East Coast to shake off the warm nostalgia of those holidays. But I am now willing to say out loud what I suspect many Americans are muttering all across the country at this time of year: Christmas has become a net loss as a socioeconomic institution.
Although for many years Christmas has been justified on the grounds that it is "merry,'' rigorous quantitative analysis establishes that the opposite is the case. Despite claims advanced by proponents that the holiday promotes a desirable "spirit,'' makes people ``jolly,'' etc., the data show that the yuletide time period is marked by environmental degradation, hazardous products and travel, and -- perhaps most important -- inefficient uses of key resources. The holiday is an insidious and overlooked factor in America's dwindling savings rates, slack worth ethic, and high crime rates. Nor does Christmas truly fulfill its purported distributional objective: the transfer of gifts to those who need them. Moreover, the number of people rendered "joyous'' by Christmas is probably equaled or excelled by the number made to feel rather blue. In short, as shown below, although Christmas is an important religious observance that provides wintertime fun for children (who would probably be having fun anyway), it fails the test of cost-effectiveness.
Christmas consumes vast resources in the dubious and uncharitable activity of "forced giving.'' First, it is necessary to factor in all the time spent searching for "just the right gifts,'' writing and mailing cards to people one ignores the rest of the year, decorating trees, attending dreary holiday parties with highly fattening, cholesterol-rich eggnog drinks and false cheer, and returning presents. Assuming conservatively that each U.S. adult spends an average of two days per year on Christmas activities, this represents an investment of nearly one million person-years per season. Just as important is the amount that Americans spend on gratuitous gifts each year -- $40 billion to $50 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's monthly retail trade sales. Extra consumer spending is often considered beneficial because it stimulates the economy, but the massive yuletide spike creates numerous harmful externalities.
Mistargeted giving is one indication of this waste. According to New York department stores, each year about 15 percent of all retail dollar purchases at Christmas are returned. Allowing for the fact that many misdirected gifts are retained because people feel obliged to keep them (such as appliances, tablecloths, etc., which must be displayed when the relative who gave them to you comes for a visit), and allowing for the widespread inability of children to return gifts, this indicates that up to a third of purchases may be ill-suited to their recipients. Christmas is really a throwback to all the inefficiencies of the barter economy, in which people have to match other people's wants to their offerings. Of course, money was invented precisely to solve this "double coincidence of wants'' problem. One solution would be to require people to give each other cash as presents, but that would quickly reveal the absurdity of the whole institution.
"Forced giving'' also artificially pumps up consumption and reduces savings, since it is unlikely that all the silly and expensive presents given at Christmas would be given at other times of the year. One particularly noxious aspect of Christmas consumption is "conspicuous giving,'' which involves luxury gifts such as Tiffany eggs, crystal paperweights, and $15,000 watches that are designed precisely for those who are least in need of any present at all ("the person who has everything''). Most such high-priced gifts are given at Christmas; the fourth quarter, according to a sampling of New York department stores, provides more than half the year's diamond, watch, and fur sales.
Naturally, gratuitous spending delights retailers. Christmas accounts for more than a fifth of their sales and two-fifths of their profits, which suggests a Marxist explanation for the holiday -- a powerful economic interest underlying the season's gift-centered ideology. But for the nation as a whole it increases the burden of consumer debt (almost a quarter of Christmas season sales are financed by credit cards or charge accounts, and January is the peak month for credit card delinquencies) and reduces our flagging savings rate (now below 5 percent of national income).
For parents, one especially exasperating aspect of Christmas is mindless toy fetishism. Christmas now accounts for 60 percent of the United States' annual $17 billion expenditure on toys and video games, according to the Toy Manufacturers Association. Much of this rapidly depreciating toy capital consists of TV-show tie-ins (there are 350 separate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle products and scores more of Ghostbusters and Bart Simpson figures) and expensive gadgets that do not work or hold interest for more than a day. According to the toy association, the country now spends nearly as much on video games like Nintendo's Super Mario and Gameboy (nearly $4 billion), activity figures like World Wrestlers ($500 million), and dolls like Barbie and My Pretty Ballerina ($1.1 billion) as on all retail book sales ($6.6 billion). Since six of the top ten toys are made by Japanese companies, one might adduce a subtle long-run Japanese strategy here.
What's more, toys are unusually hazardous consumer products. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that each year there are thirty-three deaths and 148,000 emergency room admissions due to hazardous toys, plus 1.2 million toy recalls. (The comparative figures for deaths caused by books and book recalls are zero and zero, respectively.) If these deaths, injuries, and recalls are allocated in proportion to seasonal sales, Christmas emerges as the cause of most of them. And one has only to visit any Toys 'R' Us or Child World at this time of year to see the impact of this season's extraordinary pressures on child-parent relations: distraught mothers dragging tiny toy addicts kicking and screaming away from the latest high-priced, cheesy offerings. All of this unproductive consumption would be much better spent on pencil sharpeners, calculators, and green eyeshades.
Christmas increases congestion. At least in large urban areas, it is by far the most unpleasant time to shop, travel, dine out, or go to the bathroom in a mall. Just when stores are at their most crowded, shopping becomes mandatory; just when everyone else is making family visitations, they are de rigueur. December 21 and 22 are the year's peak dates for air travel, according to the Air Transport Association of America, with 1.7 million Americans per day jamming the nation's airports, as against a year-long daily average of 1.14 million. Twenty-three million travel during the period from December 19 to January 4 -- just when the weather is often at its worst and the airlines charge their highest prices.
According to the U.S. Postal Service, the volume of mail traffic more than doubles to 220 million letters and 6 million parcels per day the week before Christmas, battering a system already weakened by tens of millions of catalogs and advertisements during the previous two months. Telephone calls reach as high as 131 million per day in the month from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve, according to AT&T. At many stores and post offices, there are long lines, and costly second and third shifts have to be added to handle them, which consumers ultimately pay for. All of this "peak loading'' at Christmas means that airlines, mail delivery, stores, banks, warehouses, telephone systems, roads, and parking lots must be built much larger than if activities were distributed more evenly throughout the year. That wastes precious capital.
Christmas destroys the environment and innocent animals and birds. These have perhaps not been traditional concerns for economists. But when one takes account of all the Christmas trees, letters, packages, increased newspaper advertising, wrapping paper, and catalogs and cards, as well as all the animals slaughtered for feast and fur, this holiday is nothing less than a catastrophe for the entire ecosystem. According to the U.S. Forest Service, 33 million Christmas trees are consumed each year. Growing them imposes an artificially short rotation period on millions of acres of forest land, and the piles of needles they shed shorten the life of most household rugs and pets. All the trees and paper have to be disposed of, which places a heavy burden on landfill sites and recycling facilities, especially in the Northeast.
This year, according to the Humane Society, at least 4 million foxes and minks will be butchered just to provide our Christmas furs. To stock our tables, the Department of Agriculture tells me, we'll also slaughter 22 million turkeys, 2 million pigs, and 2 million to 3 million cattle, plus a disproportionate fraction of the 6 billion chickens that the United States consumes each year. To anyone who has ever been to a turkey farm, Christmas and Thanksgiving take on a new and somewhat less cheerful meaning. Every single day during the run-up to these holidays, thousands of bewildered, debeaked, growth-hormone-saturated birds are hung upside down on assembly-line racks and given electric shocks. Then their throats are slit and they are dropped into boiling water.
Christmas introduces sharp seasonal fluctuations into the money demand. This makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to cushion the crests and falls of our economy. This is the peak season for people carrying large denominations around, and currency is a popular Christmas gift mostly among employers. The volume of currency in circulation peaks each year in December, then declines by about 4 to 5 percent.
Christmas leads to a sharp rise in absenteeism and a slump in labor productivity that is unlikely to be recaptured the rest of the year. Many U.S. companies shut down entirely for the two-week period from Christmas to New Year's. For those that stay open, on-the-job performance often plummets because of the season's wild parties and high jinks. Although there is no precise data on absenteeism, according to Labor Department experts, industries like manufacturing and construction are likely to have lower productivity while retailing's productivity is likely to increase.
Far from being "the season to be jolly,'' Christmas is really the season of sadness and despair. This period's compulsory merriment, hypercommercialism, heavy drinking, and undue media emphasis on the idealized, two-child, two-parent, orthodox Christian family makes those who don't share such lifestyles or religious sentiments feel left out, lonely, and even somewhat un-American. And even in so-called normal families, media hype about the season's merriments often raises expectations and sets up many for disappointment. According to Dr. Quita Mullen, a psychiatrist in Boston, many women in particular exhaust themselves trying to meet both the demands of full-time jobs and the more traditional expectations about what holidays are supposed to be like -- provided in part by their (non-working) mothers.
There is also a great deal of emotional stress associated with compulsory overspending and compulsory displays of affection. (Many people reportedly become highly anxious at the sight of mistletoe.) Police, psychiatrists, and hospitals all report that there is a dramatic rise in alcoholic "slips,'' drug overdoses, domestic quarrels, hotline calls, and emergency medical calls at this time of year. "Any redolent setting can be very sad for people who don't have a dancing partner,'' says Mullen. "Christmas is one of those times.''
Christmas is one of the most hazardous times of the year. The combination of trees, lights, blazing hearths, yuletide passion, and other indoor festivities results in more household fires at this time of year than any other. The fire department in Washington, D.C., reports that fire calls in December are 40 percent above its monthly average; New York City had 2,800 residential fires last December, as compared with a 2,000-per-month average.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, December is the peak month for drunk driving and "DWI'' arrests, which last year totaled 1.8 million. Not surprisingly, it is also the peak month for accidents -- because of drunkenness, congestion, and bad weather -- with more than 460,000 last year, compared with a monthly average of only 386,000. In just the three days around Christmas last year, 374 people died on the nation's highways. The only consolation is that last year's Thanksgiving was even worse, with 402 deaths. Of course, weather is a compounding factor -- for most of us in the colder climes, life would be much easier if we could at least agree to observe Christmas in the summer, when the lutefisk is ripe.
December is also the peak month in the United States for robberies. Last year the number reached about 54,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, and it is the second highest for auto theft, with about 136,000. Police suspect that all this property crime is because criminals too are propelled by the need to fill their family stockings. December 1989 had nearly 1,900 murders, a disproportionate share. "Christmas is a crazy season,'' says Sag Harbor, New York, Police Chief Joseph Ialacci. "It's a potpourri of emotional extremes -- either quiet or all hell breaks loose. There are more assaults, barroom brawls, and family altercations.''
Excessive eating and drinking are used to compensate for the tribulations of Christmas. According to the Distilled Spirits Council and the Department of Agriculture, in the six short weeks from Thanksgiving through New Year's, this year we will consume $18 billion of alcohol -- including 81 million gallons of hard liquor -- 1.1 billion pounds of turkey, and a huge quantity of ham, cookies, pies, eggnog, stuffing, plum pudding, and other trimmings. All this indulgence does little good for the nation's waistline: Christmas is one of the single most important contributors to obesity -- the average American consumes more than 3,500 calories at Christmas Day dinner alone. Naturally, January is the peak month for diet plans, many of which end up in failure and despair.
Perhaps most important of all, from a purely distributional standpoint, Christmas almost certainly aggravates inequality, since most gift-giving takes place within the family or the same social class, and doesn't reach the people who really need our help. Salvation Army drum-beating aside, Christmas almost certainly reduces our capacity for charity by draining us of wealth that we might otherwise give to the needy, and of our charitable impulses. This is hardly what the person for whom the holiday is named had in mind.
Overall, the message is clear: Christmas imposes a huge efficiency tax on our economy, is hazardous to our health and safety, and does little to further social justice. And the efficiency tax may well be growing in real terms -- an analysis of long-term changes in the seasonality of the U.S. economy suggests that the Christmas buying season has been getting longer and longer. Christmas commercialism, of course, is a modern innovation. The ancient Christians did not even observe the holiday until the fifth century, medieval Christians observed it much more modestly, and the Puritans sensibly refused to celebrate it at all. Only in the last fifty years, with the perfection of mass-market advertising and the commercialization of religion in general, has it become such a command performance.
Modern Christmas is like primitive Keynesianism, a short-run-oriented economic experiment that has been tried and found wanting. It is the flipside of the positive contribution the "Protestant ethic'' once made to capitalism -- Christianity's high holiday now almost certainly makes us feel worse off. What is to be done? I suggest an experimental two- to three-year moratorium on the whole affair, to let us pay our bills and recover some of the distance we've lost. This may sound like tough medicine to youngsters, and to all the other interest groups that have acquired such large commercial stakes in this annual ritual -- from bulb manufacturers to ambulance drivers. But the rest of us can no longer afford it. If we celebrate this holiday at all, we should do so mainly because it is over for at least one more year.
The Achievement Gap: Blame The Parents
When will we address the achievement gap as it relates to, well, reality? Here is a start:
Study Cites Impact of “Low Quality Parenting” on Achievement
by Robert Pondiscio on December 23, 2008
“Low-quality parenting” can determine the ‘school readiness’ of children from low-income backgrounds,” according to a new report from Columbia University professor Jane Waldfogel.
Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook of the University of Bristol in the U.K. analyzed data on 19,000 children born in the UK in 2000 and 10,000 children born in the United States in 2001. The children in both studies were followed from the age of nine months onwards, and completed tests in language, literacy and mathematics skills at ages three, four or five. The authors write:During the crucial first few years of life, low-income children experience poorer environments in terms of factors that would promote their cognitive, social and health development.They are more likely to begin school with deficits in their learning ability and social behaviour – and, as a result, they progress more slowly than their more affluent peers and achieve fewer educational qualifications, even in circumstances in which schools serve all pupils equally.The research also shows that “higher-income mothers interact more positively with their children” when they are as young as nine months old, show greater sensitivity to their needs, are less intrusive and provide more cognitive stimulation. These types of behaviors are then strongly related to children’s performance at the time of entry to school, and in particular to language development.Our research identifies lower quality parenting behaviours as a key factor behind the deficits in school readiness of low-income children in the US. If that is indeed the case, the question naturally arises of what can be done to improve parenting skills in the poorest families.A BBC report on the study carries the subhed, “Poor parenting is the key factor behind the significant gaps in readiness for school between children from low and middle income families.” It’s a testament to how deeply ingrained the idea that teachers and schools should be able to overcome all deficits that such a headline seems mildly shocking to American eyes.
The study appears in the University of Bristol’s Research in Public Policy; a podcast with Elizabeth Washbrook on the report is available here.
12/22/08
Christmas: The Dick Cheney Of Holidays
Steven Weber says it best about Christmas:
Christmas is the Dick Cheney of holidays: it purports to be there for noble purposes but blatantly demonstrates wholly unholy ones. Why even bother pretending to be an elected servant of the people or a joyous time of reflection on the birth of a savior? Go fuck yourself to all and to all a good night.
Is It True Every Time You Hear an Accordion an Angel Gets Kicked in the Nuts?
As Christmas trundles onto the main stage to provide the audience with another gaudy burlesque, I am reminded that the Jesus kid, were he around today, would probably either be trying to put a stop to all the slander his good name has endured by slamming Western culture with a high profile lawsuit or else have his own line of chic yet affordable Shroud of Turin loinwear. For once again, we are treated to a holiday season which doesn't even bother to put up any pretense to its origin, opting instead to be brazen and sans irony about its true purpose: to bring Americans to a fevered, panting orgasm of consumerism.
Christmas is the Dick Cheney of holidays: it purports to be there for noble purposes but blatantly demonstrates wholly unholy ones. Why even bother pretending to be an elected servant of the people or a joyous time of reflection on the birth of a savior? Go fuck yourself to all and to all a good night.
Even though the idea of Christmas can still stir some emotion in my secular spirit I know that it's based not on the vestigial good will I may have toward my fellow citizens but on nascent hopes I entertained as a child, susceptible to such sentimental catalysts like A Charlie Brown Christmas or Miracle on 34th Street. Rather than imbue me with an optimism that was applicable in every day life, they resulted in emotions wrung out in response to these and other expertly crafted flickering fairy tales; more manipulation for marketing's sake. Kris Kringle and Charlie Brown were put upon and tortured for our sins and Macy's, Gimbel's and Snoopy had more than capably replaced the three wise men.
And yet, there is real sensual enjoyment to be gotten from the rituals associated with this time of year: the sight of a humble but gorgeously bedecked Christmas tree; the sound of snow crunching under foot on the way to midnight mass; the perfect timbre of a chorale---all of which makes your soul feel as though it's being plucked by a universal luthier. You vibrate sympathetically as though your body were answering an ancient call to participate in something bigger than could ever be imagined by the limits of religious iconography or the Made in Taiwan flimsiness of seasonal bunting.
Since the species seems for the most part to be tumbling headfirst into a cyber abyss (thanks, Facebook, for becoming the physical manifestation of six degrees of separation---how could one NOT fall into that ego-oubliette?) it is sentiment rather than intellect which remains the best hope of defining our humanity in this cold consumer culture. While reason may have failed us, or perhaps more charitably brought us to a point where actual, physical participation is no longer expected or required, our need to find our way through sweet memories of sights, sounds, tastes, touches and smells formed in our youthful, hopeful stages before we awoke to the monolithic, monetary reality of Christmas® may be our way back to a more meaningful observation of the holiday. Because with every passing moment of ersatz representations of holy days and holy men, reality becomes so much less inviting.
So why not wallow in or at least savor---if briefly---the sweetness of simplicity and celebrate Christmas within the sentimental realm of the senses? In times like these, it's the best gift money could never buy.