Morning Fog

Streamlining The Senate

A bipartisan group of Senators seems prepared to propose modest changes to Senate procedures when the session gets underway again after the first of the year.  It appears the proposals would streamline consideration of legislation by prohibiting or reducing the use of the filibuster threat to inhibit scheduling, discussion, or moving things out of committee.  It preserves the filibuster as a tool for the final voting on any measure, however.

Morning Fog applauds bipartisanship wherever it occurs (and no matter how rarely).  (Appplause, applause.) The sponsors of these proposals, led by Levin and McCain, believe that to seek more drastic change would just lead to more vitriolic debate, and probably to the defeat of any reform effort. In the spirit of bipartisanship, we have to accept their reading of the mood in the Senate for reform.

In an ideal world, though, we would prefer to see somewhat more far-reaching change.  There are valid arguments to make the filibuster itself go the way of the dodo, but if it would be too much to expect its complete elimination, we should at least restore the feature that made it both famous and infamous:  that Senators of the minority, to impose a filibuster, would actually have to stand and speak constantly in order to maintain it. 

This might seem a waste of time, to have our highly paid Senators deployed on the chamber floor, blathering on to an empty room.  I'm sure the Senators thought so, when they agreed, in the best tradition of bipartisanship, to spare themselves that labor and indignity.  But it's a lot easier to threaten a filibuster than to have to conduct one; the restoration of the stand-and-speak rule should eliminate many of the more frivolous pseudo-filibusters. 

 

 

Constitutional Confusion

I've been struck lately by how widespread misconceptions about basic principles - such as those in our Constitution - seem to take root and become accepted.

The latest such was something I heard lately on the news:  The owner of a business called "Hobby Lobby" wants to sue to block the new health law's requirement that employer health coverage must include contraception such as the "morning after" pill.  (Apparently, that's not for hangovers!  Who knew?)   A spokesman for the company was unashamed to say in front of the cameras something to the effect that "the government can't force [the owners] to provide something that's against their religion." 

Exactly wrong, of course.  If Hobby Lobby is allowed to deny certain kinds of coverage to employees who do not share its religious views, then it's those employees, not the owner, who are having their religious rights curtailed.  As I've pointed out before, it's hardly up to employers to force their religious opinions on those who don't share them.  Should Christian Scientist bosses be allowed to refuse medical insurance to their non-CS employees?  And what's to prevent anyone from developing a "religious" objection to any law or regulation he dislikes?  No, the shoe must be on the other foot - the employee's - in these cases.

The second amendment on the right to bear arms is regularly misinterpeted by proponents of unlimited access to all sorts of guns, who like to pretend that the words "well-regulated militia" aren't there.  Even our Supreme Court has bought into this myth to some degree! 

Speaking of myths, I found the article "Five Myths About Gun Control," by Robert Spitzer, interesting and enlightening, particularly the fourth and fifth points, which bring new material to the discussion.  Point Five, in fact -- which debunks the notion that the second amendment was designed to let average citizens conduct armed insurrection against a government they consider tyrannical --  was so revealing to me that I hope Spitzer won't mind my quoting it here in full:

[Myth 5]. The Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of Americans to rise up against a tyrannical government.

This canard is repeated with disturbing frequency. The Constitution, in
Article I, allows armed citizens in militias to “suppress Insurrections,” not
cause them. The Constitution defines treason as “levying War” against the
government in Article III, and the states can ask the federal government for
assistance “against domestic Violence” under Article IV.

Our system provides peaceful means for citizens to air grievances and change
policy, from the ballot box to the jury box to the right to peaceably assemble.
If violence against an oppressive government were somehow countenanced in the
Second Amendment, then Timothy McVeigh and Lee Harvey Oswald would have been
vindicated for their heinous actions. But as constitutional scholar Roscoe Pound
noted, a “legal right of the citizen to wage war on the government is something
that cannot be admitted” because it would “defeat the whole Bill of Rights” —
including the Second Amendment.

I suppose nearly every amendment, at least those in the original Bill of Rights, has been subject to some distortion and misconception, often by those with a particular goal in mind.  I am concerned, though, that the internet makes the spread of such misreadings broader and more rapid.

Republicans Hornswoggled Themselves

Well, it's supposed to be "back to Washington" today for Congress, which will also mean "back to the fiscal cliff," and in the case of the Republicans, "back to the wall," as Ezra Klein explained recently. 

Back when everyone agreed to the sequestration deal, it seemed clear that - at the time - the Republicans wouldn't go along with any other solution because they thought they would win the White House, probably gain seats in the Senate, and be sitting in the catbird's seat at this point.  A practical and clever political strategy.

But they aren't. And erroneous expectations come with costs.  Klein does a great job showing how Boehner and his fellow Republicans might wish they had taken the deal before; but that's off the table, and if Boehner can't bring some unity to his side of the table, it's likely they'll end up with something they like even worse.

Not that that's a bad outcome, as that solution would reflect how people voted in November.

Passive House

I think the things people are trying these days to improve the "sustainability" of the average residence are very exciting and positive.

A case in point is the "passive" house (the term refers to the actual structure, not to its residents).  One such is currently being built in the District of Columbia, and I'm familiar with one that exists here in Arlington, Virginia too.

As the Post reports on the house in Deanwood (DC), the passive house is designed - first and foremost - to use substantially less energy than most existing homes by being insulated, airtight, and using solar or geothermal energy rather than fossil fuel for heating and cooling.  Ideally, it's also designed for net-zero energy use, meaning that it would produce as much energy as it uses. 

As one of the designers notes, it's not too hard nowadays to build a "green" house if you've got plenty of money to spend on it.  So the second key design feature of the latest crop of sustainable houses is affordability.  This seems to be achievable, in current circumstances, by finding low-cost land and by constructing fairly small and simple houses.  But the technology used in these pioneering affordables will certainly also affect the middle of the market before long.

It's taken us a long time to get to this point.  The basic points - insulate well and reduce the number of holes you poke in the walls for utilities, windows, and such - has been a commonsense "gimme" for decades, yet was (and still is) largely ignored by builders.  Too many houses have been thrown up with little or no thought for their energy efficiency, I suppose for the same reason that builders often don't put in other features that people want. 

I often see the owners of new construction in my area spending still more money to modify things that the builder could have done more easily and cheaply -- add a deck, or better kitchen cabinets, or even an electric garage-door opener, for example.  That kind of retrofit modification is always expensive, but in the case of modifying a home's basic heating/cooling systems, it's horrendous if not impossible.  I hope the sustainability concept catches on more widely in the construction industry.  I'd love to live in such a house.  

Merry What?

Barbara Reynolds, "an ordained minister and columnist," waxed defensive in the Washington Post this week about the name of the holiday we celebrate at this time of year.  She likes "Christmas" and cites a Rasmussen Report to the effect that 68% of Americans prefer the greeting "Merry Christmas" at this time of year to "Happy Holidays" or other such substitutes.

But Ms. Reynolds's screed sags under the weight of several problems of logic and a failure to see the world as it is.

Basics:  First, we're not told by what faith Reynolds is ordained.  Obviously, it's a Christian one.  To a professional Christian, Christmas is about Christ, just as to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Second, I'm all for women ministers, but it presents a problem of how to address them.  If a priest is "Father," and abbreviated "Fr." as in "Fr. O'Flynn," shall we address a priestess as "Mother," and if so, would that be abbreviated "Mr."?  If so, it's very confusing.  Third, I'd guess that the 65% who approve "Merry Christmas" is also about the percentage of our population who are Christian, so the statistic is meaningless.  Fourth, we need to recall that our greeting at this time of year, even as Christians, includes at least two holidays:  Christmas, and New Year's Day, so the greeting "Happy Holidays" makes a lot of sense for most of us even if we're not trying to be politico-religiously correct. 

Whew!  Now that I've basically corrected the spelling in this theme paper, let me move on to the "logical organization and thinking" part.

I'll assume Mr. Reynolds would concede that the date is meaningless except insofar as the early church, a couple of thousand years ago, piggy-backed the birth of Jesus willy-nilly onto existing pagan celebrations related to the solstice.  In turn, I'll concede her point that "Christmas" itself - that one day - is indeed a religious occasion for those who are Christians; also, that originally, the motivation in designating that day a holiday, was to mark a religious occasion that most or all of us shared. 

What she misses is that the term came to represent a whole coterie of associations which - like it or not - became a part of the holiday season:  the Christmas tree, the buying and giving of presents, Santa Claus, the turn of the year, festivals of light, god-awful plastic lawn bubbles and light displays -- all these have become a part of what people associate with "Christmas."  Christians are free to continue to observe it in a religious perspective, but other brands of religiosity, not to mention many Christians as well, don't see it that way.  In short, Christmas has become bigger than Christ. 

(Here, a gentle plug for the Morning Fog revised holiday calendar," in which we eliminate this problem by re-naming "Christmas" to "Solstice Day," and leave each religion to celebrate its own major feast or famine days without having them designated as national holidays.)  

A second major problem is Mr. Reynolds's self-centeredness.  She says she "earnestly respect[s] all other religions," but the tone of her essay here -- encapsulated in her statement that "if the object is to be inclusive, that is the wrong goal," incontrovertibly belies that claim.

Reynolds can have her religious Christmas, of course, but it's odd she should write this article, which seems to be addressed to an audience she doesn't acknowledge exists. 

The National Rifle Association's Death Rattle

It's not as if we had expected anything much from the National Rifle Association, when they announced they'd hold a press conference today that would make a positive contribution to the controversy raised by the Sandy Hook School massacre.  This organization has stood by its guns (pun intended) through thick and thin, and there's no reason to suppose they'd suddenly change their worn tune.

In fact, what Executive Veep Wayne LaPierre delivered was even less than "not much."  It was nothing, and it was laughable.  LaPierre proposed (are you ready for this?) that an armed police officer should be deployed in every school in the land!

Thus LaPierre and the NRA:

• Try to lay blame for mass shootings on everybody except themselves. They're totally blameless!
• Offer an insensitive and uncaring "solution" that's completely divorced from the issue of real concern to the public.
• Propose to turn our schools into police states - is this a healthy thing?
• Seek to use the debate surrounding a national tragedy to leverage even more gun sales.
• Put the burden of protecting our schools from the NRA's inflexibility on the public. (Blame the victim, and make him pay for it too!)
• Fail to say where the money for all the rent-a-cops will come from. (If the NRA were prepared to fund it, we might take their proposal a little more seriously).

To add insult to injury, the NRA obviously threw up a hasty proposal without really thinking it through:  For example, How many schools are in the U.S.?  10,000?  Probably many more than that, yet LaPierre tosses off the cost of the project with the thought that there must be money in government budgets.  Or another example: Won't any would-be killer just find the rent-a-cop and kill him first, still leaving kids unprotected? 

"Guns" has not become a dirty word, as LaPierre suggests.  It's more complicated than that, and he knows it.  By refusing to budge from its own hardened-artery position - i.e. that every citizen should have a weapon intended for mass killing -  the NRA has shown it has no clothes. 

They should have realized it would have been better for them not to have said anything, than to say this. An organization that sticks to extreme, outmoded, and indefensible positions and refuses to accept change is a dying organization.  It's the beginning of the end for the NRA.

 

Freedom Of Choice In Voting

Columnist George Will says, in "Mountain Out of a Molehill,"  that people should be able to refrain from voting if they want to.  Absolutely!  And that would surely include the right to not register to vote, if the individual so prefers.   

On the other hand, Will also asserts that federalizing the voter registration process is a step on the road to mandatory voting.  Not so.  That's what columnists, if they're honest, would call an "obligatory red herring." I suppose that he is seeking to justify the practice of states' attempting to limit voter access to the polls by making registration more difficult, as several states did in the run-up to the November elections. 

Don't get me wrong, I see no problem in principle with the idea that any voter should produce a valid and reasonably verifiable identification card at the polls.   The problem arises when some states attempt to do this while others do not.  Implementation of the election process that varies from state to state seems patently unfair.  Further, the ability of states to alter rules in ways that don't conform to other states' practices is very obviously open to abuse.  We decided in the 1960s that poll taxes and trumped up "literacy tests" had no place in the election process, so today it seems evident that we should not have different states setting different rules for how a citizen of the United States may qualify as a registered voter (if he/she chooses to do so).

So it's a real surprise that Will doesn't support what he calls "federalization" of voting.  It makes a lot of sense to me.  What could be wrong about establishing federal rules and procedures for what is, after all, a national election in which voters exercise rights granted them by our national constitution?   There is also precedent, since Congress long ago set uniform nationwide dates for Presidential elections, without objection from anyone, not even Mr. Will.

But let's also be honest and fair about what the federal rules ought to be.  Frankly, I side with Will in thinking that overly easy registration, and the increasing prevalence of pre-election voting, are not healthy trends. 

Something that's too easy or too readily available, I've found, tends to get devalued.  The standards for getting a driver's license have all too evidently become much laxer since the days when I learned to drive; as a consequence, nobody seems to know  how to drive anymore.  Too-easy mortgage loans in the 1990s led people to throw caution to the winds, ignoring what they could afford and creating the housing bubble.  Lowered standards of achievement for a high school diploma made it possible for everyone to obtain one, but produced high rates of functional illiteracy and innumeracy.  You'll probably drink less beer tonight if you've only got two bottles in the fridge, than if you've got three six-packs in there.

So let's not turn voting into a commodity.  It's a privilege, a right, and a duty.  Let's require IDs.  Rules should provide for early and painless registration, which seems to me to benefit everyone; but early voting should be limited to special situations, mainly cases in which the voter would otherwise be unable to vote.  It's been argued that this disadvantages Democratic Party constituencies.  Well, the Democrats have always had to make a greater effort to get out the vote, and that will continue.  But that might be counterbalanced by another change that would greatly facilitate voter turnout, particularly among the working-age population.  Elections should be on Sundays, not Tuesdays.     

Noodling About Newtown

There's so much ink being spilled and hot air expelled about the elementary-school shooting spree in Newtown, Connecticut, that I hesitate to write on the subject.  Yet I do find a few points that don't seem to be a part of the media focus.

One is what I just said:  The sheer amount of coverage on the topic.  The first thing that occurred to me, when I saw national-news anchors racing out the night of the disaster to do their nightly national news "on location," was how this kind of media attention must thrill the perpetrators of such crimes, and spur the next one on to plan something even bigger and "better" for his own 30 seconds of fame. 

Apparently the actor Morgan Freeman was falsely quoted over the weekend as suggesting that the media are to blame for these tragedies.  We can't, I suppose, go so far as to say that five days of non-stop breathless news on the same topic "causes" such events.  Yet to my mind, there's no way we can deny that it contributes to them.  The media will argue that this sensationalism helps to inform the public, and assists us all in understanding why such horrific events occur (they don't often add that it helps sell cars and chia pets too).  Let them argue, but I have yet to see a case in which, when the full story was told, we really understood any better "why" it happened.  Nuts are nuts, and they are best roasted. 

Point two is the inevitable argument about gun laws, with liberal newsies forecasting a new thrust for controls, and congressmen offering up paid arguments from their sponsor, like the Lott-Mustard study, to the effect that putting more guns our in society among average people actually results in lower crime. 

Clearly what's occurred here in these "studies" is that organizations with axes to grind can always prove almost anything, in this case by defining "crime" so broadly as to be meaningless, as the hot dogs with Lotts o' Mustard appear to have done.  The real test is whether nut cases and the mentally deficient ought to find it as easy to get a gun as anyone else; and whether a mother with such a "troubled" son really solved anything by having an assault rifle around the house to protect herself from him. 

As for Texas Congressman Gohmert's suggestion that the school principal ought to have had a weapon, I can only marvel at the idiocy of that.  It seems to me that schools are the very last place we should randomly sprinkle guns around.  I can just imagine, with the best intentions, the likelihood of things going off track - the teacher or principal forgets to lock up the gun, students know of their existence and find them easy to steal ... the list goes on.

Meanwhile, the President's statement that something needs to change is certainly true; Newtown may result at least in renewal of controls on some kinds of assault weapons; but isn't likely to go much further than that.  As with the media, we can't categorically state that our gun culture "causes" these events; but we can't logically deny that it does contribute.

Third point:  I am seeing some tendency to solicit monetary donations to "help the victims" in Newtown.  This is a curious approach and (to me) a bit suspect.  Sandy Hook is a big, walloping tragedy, but I can't see how money is what's needed.  The town looks like a pretty well-off suburban 'ville - as evidenced by the talk that they may just decide to close the Sandy Hook school permanently, raze it, and construct a new one elsewhere.  And there's no evident need that money can solve - do they need blankets, food, fuel, inoculations, or shelter?  No.  Of course, the modern tendency is to flood the scene with grief counselors, but hiring such people, if they're not already on tap, would be up to local governments and school systems. I'd far rather give money to the Red Cross for a different Sandy - New Jersey's storm victims.

Insourcing, Power Outages, and Congress

The Atlantic * is a magazine I've been reading probably for at least 40 years; it always has interesting, thoughtful articles that usually manage to steer clear of overt political partisanship.  

The December issue (try accessing it at www.theatlantic.com) has an article describing the latest trend in manufacturing, which is to return to the U.S. many jobs that were outsourced in the past couple of decades.  That trend has been well documented, so this is old news, but one comment that caught my attention was this:

"There was a herd mentality to the offshoring.  And there was some bullshit.  But it was also the inability to see the total costs."  (This quote is attributed to John Shook, CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute.)

Absolutely.  Most of the hidden costs -- the loss of know-how over time; costs of transportation; lower productivity; a predictable tendency of wages in those cheap-labor countries to rise; etc., etc. -- could have been spotted, but even if they were, their effects were longer-term and therefore of little interest to short-horizon thinkers who mostly constitute our business strategists.

I believe the same can be said of the refusal of our power companies to take seriously the possibility of buying power lines.  They argue it's too expensive, but I've always wondered if that simple excuse really takes into account all the costs and disadvantages of continuing with traditional practice:  lost productivity in the economy, for sure, but also the high costs of repair crews, often with overtime, often imported from other states; costs of replacing equipment; the costs of having to pre-trim trees which is often of little real use.   In the electrical power generation industry as in manufacturing, we can count on business strategists to emphasize the short-term and to actively underestimate the long-term.

This summer, after the first of three multi-day outages in our region, I finally acquired a small portable home generator.  It's enough to keep the fridge and freezer running. It's a step I had resisted, but eventually we got fed up with losing hundreds of dollars worth of foodstuffs on average of once a year.  (And this year in fact we had three major power outages.)  Individual home generators are noisy, troublesome, inefficient, polluting, and dangerous -- so in most respects, a lot like Congress! -- but we are driven to them despite their drawbacks when the institutions that are supposed to provide faithful and stable service don't prove to be up to the task.

* The Atlantic used to be called "The Atlantic Monthly" but the monthly part was surreptitiously dropped when they went to 10 issues a year.  The longest-running subscription I have is National Geographic, which runs back to December 1954.  But I may drop National Geo - it stll has those great photos, but it has become boring to read because every article has exactly the same style.

Race To Stay In The Same Place

There are some interesting cross-cutting stories in today's news concerning race, and racial bias, in the U.S.

One is the little tempest over a sportscaster's suggestion that the Washington Redskins' rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III (RGIII) isn't black enough.  This is something black celebrities seem always to have to deal with.  (Obama isn't black enough either.)  It's an old issue amongst the African-American population, but a silly one.  It seems to suggest that just by virtue of success in our mostly-white society, people of color must have betrayed their African-American culture. 

Then there is the most recent jobs report, in which the black jobless rate remains nearly twice that of whites, a persistent finding that sociologists are now attributing not just to racial bias, but also the relative lack of social networks within the black community.

These two reports just reinforce the truth that the election and reelection of an Af-Am President, while clearly milestones, should not be interpreted to mean that racism and its effects in our social fabric have been banished. 

That's why possibly the most interesting writing on the subject today was Michael Gerson's editorial.  Gerson is a rightist columnist who isn't always "right" - meaning that he can sometimes be objective.  He proposes that dealing with the persistent differential between black and white employment rates might become the centerpiece of Obama's second term -- something that would address a serious imbalance in socioeconomic justice, something that an African-American President might be uniquely qualified to address, and (Gerson doesn't mention this one) also something that would address the oft-heard complaint of black activists that Obama hasn't pursued programs specifically focused on African-American issues and needs.

It could be a win/win, and as Gerson advocates, it might add a spark of life to a second-term agenda.