Michael Bates: May 2018 Archives
Why California Leaves Its Homeless Out in the Sun - WSJ
An unintended consequence of criminal justice reform measures that reduce penalties, such as Oklahoma's SQ 780: More crime.
"Another apparent culprit is Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot initiative that reduced jail sentences for nonviolent crimes, including shoplifting, theft of less than $950, and drug use. Police officers have reported that they no longer arrest thieves and drug users, since offenders now often get released in short order.
"People who once would have been locked up, including those with drug addictions and mental-health problems, have been left to the streets. Many steal to feed their habits. Since Proposition 47 passed, property crime has soared in many California cities even while falling nationwide. Between 2014 and 2017, larceny increased by 9% in Anaheim, 22% in Los Angeles and Santa Ana, and 44% in San Francisco.
"The Orange County government reported clearing 13,950 needles, 404 tons of trash and 5,279 pounds of hazardous waste from the Anaheim encampment. Some 700 riverbed squatters were given 30-day motel vouchers and referred to public services. When the vouchers expired at the end of March, some were able to find beds at crowded makeshift shelters, such as tents in parking lots. Others dispersed to the streets."
A Professor's Revolt | commentary:
Regulations tied to federal financial aid drive administrative bloat, soaring tuition (which requires more federal financial aid with more strings attached, and faculty demoralization. Noah Rothman reviews David Graeber's article in The Chronicle of Higher Education previewing Graeber's upcoming book.
"This is a relatively recent paradigmatic shift in how the academy views the role of administrators in higher education. Graeber observes that, in the 20-year period from 1985 to 2005, the number of administrators increased at universities by 85 percent while the number of students and faculty increased by only 50 percent. In that same period, the number of administrative staff ballooned by a staggering 240 percent.
"Graeber attributes this condition to 'managerial feudalism,' and the label has not been misapplied. The aristocracy he describes is barely distinguishable from seigneury. Department heads and faculty deans are beneficiaries of a modern form of Manorialism. After all, what is a lordship without vassals? As Graeber outlines, reputation demands that every administrative staffer of sufficient rank retain at least four or five subordinates. 'Office workers are typically kept on even if they are doing literally nothing, lest somebody's prestige suffer,' Graeber wrote.
"Payroll costs are expensive. It is no coincidence that in nearly the same period that Graber identifies as the point at which university administrative staff began to expand exponentially the cost of achieving a higher education exploded. Between 1985 and 2011, the cost of a four-year degree increased by 498 percent while consumer inflation rose by just over 100 percent. American incomes have only just about kept pace with inflation in that same timeframe, so the cost of college has for many become a prohibitive expense even if it is increasingly a necessary one.
"As Americans have become concerned that education is becoming a prohibitive expense, the American political class has stepped in to promise them deliverance. Democrats, in particular, are keen to promise miracles: 'tuition-free' college at state and community schools and debt forgiveness for students who attend private institutions are the most popular solutions. But these efforts only mask costs by hiding them from consumers, ensuring that they will continue to grow and at a speedier pace. Thoughtless appeals to public sector intervention in the education market will only make the problem worse because the public sector is largely responsible for the problem in the first place.
"Graeber is surely speaking from experience when he claims the serfs toiling in administrative fields are performing rote and unnecessary tasks, but he's perhaps painting with too broad a brush. In 2013, longtime Johns Hopkins University Biostatistics Professor Roger Peng noted that the administrative staffers he's observed aren't busying themselves with make-work. They're performing a vital service for the university: compliance.
"For example, provosts and the battalion of staffers in their command are responsible for ensuring that the university meets federal standards on issues like 'Title IX, accreditation, Americans with Disabilities Act, and many others.' Among the federal regulations with which universities and colleges must be compliant are guidelines involving age discrimination, animal welfare, anti-trust and anti-corruption laws, hazardous materials training and containment, lobbying restrictions, preserving parental and privacy rights, ensuring student security and adjudicating on-campus offenses, ensuring compliant meal plans and cafeteria spaces are available, meeting UNESCO standards, preserving trademarks, and complying with financial-disclosure provisions. And that's just the federal level. Any school that provides online classes, for example, must run a gauntlet of state-level regulatory mechanisms. All of this costs money, which makes alumni relations and donor maintenance even more pivotal to a university's operations. And none of this happens without a general counsel's office sorting through all of it."
Joni Eareckson Tada: Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of My Diving Accident
'Throughout my 20s, I became immersed in Bible study with these same friends--mostly character studies about God, especially his sovereignty. When it came to my accident, I had to know whether the buck stopped with him, and if it did, why didn't he prevent my accident? Around my big farmhouse table in Maryland, we'd tackle books like Loraine Boettner's The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination and others by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, J. Gresham Machen, and J. I. Packer.
'I now laugh as I picture myself with these books on my music stand, flipping pages this way and that with my mouth stick. But decades of study, paralysis, pain, and cancer have taught me to say, "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees" (Ps. 119:71). I won't rehearse all of suffering's benefits here. Many of you know them by heart. Like the way God uses it to shape Christ's character in us (Rom. 8:28-29). Or how it produces patience (Rom. 5:4). Or how it refines our faith like gold (1 Pet. 1:7). Or gives us a livelier hope of heaven (James 1:12). And on and on.
'However, if I were to nail down suffering's main purpose, I'd say it's the textbook that teaches me who I really am, because I'm not the paragon of virtue I'd like to think I am. Suffering keeps knocking me off my pedestal of pride. Sometimes, when my scoliosis becomes extremely painful, I'll murmur and drop hints to God that he's piling on too much. Later, when the pain dissipates, I'll make excuses: Lord, that's not like me. I'm not like that at all.
'But it is like me. It's exactly like me....
'Back in the '70s, my Bible study friend Steve Estes shared ten little words that set the course for my life: "God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves." Steve explained it this way: "Joni, God allows all sorts of things he doesn't approve of. God hated the torture, injustice, and treason that led to the crucifixion. Yet he permitted it so that the world's worst murder could become the world's only salvation. In the same way, God hates spinal cord injury, yet he permitted it for the sake of Christ in you--as well as in others. Like Joseph when he told his brothers, 'God intended [my suffering] for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives'" (Gen. 50:20). '
J.J. McCullough's Transgender Compromise Suggestion -- Let's Not | National Review:
Michael Brendan Dougherty rebuts McCullough's tendentious column urging conservative capitulation on transgenderism.
'As I wrote in a recent cover story for NR, the demand to acknowledge someone's "existence" is a slippery bit of a double-talk. I would be an idiot to deny McCullough's existence. But if he said that he were a Camaroonian, rather than a Canadian, would it be his existence that I denied by contradicting him? McCullough goes on to say that we shouldn't be boorish. Okay. Fine. He cautions against, "[e]mbracing open prejudice." Sounds good. But are we allowed to tell the truth?
'I worry we are not, since we are now falsifying even recent history. McCullough refers to other recent changes in attitudes toward sexuality and says they are "not an attitude government has coerced Americans into." Au contraire. The very public firings of dissenters and their virtual economic blacklisting, are very directly inspired by fear of Title VII litigation. The government has merely outsourced thought-policing to corporate HR departments.
'Let me lay down my prediction, here. We are not headed toward some civilized modus vivendi but imminent tragedy. In the future, the current psychological theories and surgical enthusiasms associated with this movement will be regarded with open horror.'
Transgender Debate: Conservatives Can't Compromise the Truth | National Review
David French also responds to McCullough's proposal:
'While I'm utterly opposed to boorish behavior, the use of a pronoun isn't a matter of mere manners. It's a declaration of a fact. I won't call Chelsea Manning "she" for a very simple reason. He's a man.... We're on a dangerous road if we imply that treating a person with "basic human dignity" requires acquiescing to claims we know to be false.
'I don't know any serious social conservative who doesn't believe that a transgender man or woman is entitled to "basic human dignity." No one is claiming that they should be excluded from the blessings of American liberty or deprived of a single privilege or immunity of citizenship.... But that's not the contemporary legal controversy. Current legal battles revolve around the state's effort to force private and public entities to recognize and accommodate transgender identities. The justification for this coercive effort is often the state's alleged interest in preventing so-called "dignitary" harm. Thus, men are granted rights to enter a woman's restroom, even when gender-neutral options are available. Thus, private citizens are forced to use false pronouns. Girls are forced to allow a boy to stay in their room on an overnight school trip, or they're forced to compete against boys in athletic competition.
'But once you grant the premise that a man is, in fact, a woman, don't all these consequences flow directly from that concession? After all, existing nondiscrimination statutes are quite clear in their scope. And judicial precedents are increasingly aligning with this new fiction. To "compromise" on identity (including on pronouns) is to end the dispute.
'In his own response to J.J.'s piece, Michael Brendan Dougherty asks a key question, "[A]re we allowed to tell the truth?" Increasingly, the answer is no. J.J. compares the modern dispute over transgenderism to current and recent fights over homosexuality. The comparison is instructive, but not in the way that he hopes. There has been no "compromise" over homosexuality. Instead, we're locked in brutal legal fights over whether Christian bakers and florists can be compelled to use their artistic talents to celebrate gay weddings. Christian colleges have had to fend off challenges to their accreditation and funding (and the Obama administration raised the possibility of challenging their tax exemptions) for simply upholding basic standards of Christian sexual morality. And in California, the new sexual orthodoxy now threatens even the sale of books that deliver a disfavored message not just on sexual orientation but also on sexual conduct.
'I understand the desire for social peace. Truly I do. The culture wars are exhausting and divisive. But treating every single human being with dignity and respect means not just defending their constitutional liberties and showing them basic human kindness, it also means telling the truth -- even when the truth is hard. Any compromise that requires conservatives to grant the other side's false and harmful premise is no compromise at all.'
Those of us who understand the truth need to speak the truth in love, and to resist the pressure to conform or remain silent, because the lies of the LGBT movement wound, maim, kill, and damn.
A nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places contains a wealth of historical detail, not only about the site and the building, but often about the people, events, and times that give it significance. If you're researching local history, NRHP forms are a great resource. Maryland offers a well-organized example: You can browse NRHP sites by county, look at National Register Districts and National Historic Landmarks, and research topics like lighthouses and Civil War Sites.
Democrat: Voters Are Too Stupid to Fill Out Ballots
Old-timers will remember that in 1972, Democrats tried to overturn Henry Bellmon's narrow win over Ed Edmondson for U. S. Senate, on the grounds that Tulsa's newfangled voting machines lacked a way to vote straight party -- to "stamp the rooster" -- disadvantaging Democrats.
'The Democratic secretary of state in New Mexico thinks voters are incapable of filling out their ballot without help.
'Maggie Toulouse Oliver penned an editorial in the Albuquerque Journal advocating for the return of straight-ticket voting, which would allow voters to check one box, such as Democrat, and vote for every Democrat on the ballot....
'Oliver argues picking the candidates voters want is "long and complicated," and therefore they need to be told who to vote for based on party.
'She said having voters choose every candidate they are voting for is "voter suppression."'
Interesting idea: A second mobile phone, ringing on the same number, but only able to handle phone calls, so you can leave the internet behind once in a while, but still be reachable.
The Wisdom of Oscar Hammerstein - WSJ
Peggy Noonan on a long-ago interview with Oscar Hammerstein.
'It's a small thing, a half-hour television interview from 60 years ago, but it struck me this week as a kind of master class in how to be a public figure and how to talk about what matters. In our polarized moment it functions as both template and example.
'In March 1958, the fierce young journalist Mike Wallace... decided to bore in on Oscar Hammerstein II.... Hammerstein was the fabled lyricist and librettist who with composer Richard Rodgers put jewels in the crown of American musical theater--"Oklahoma," "South Pacific," "The King and I," and "Carousel," whose latest Broadway revival is about to open. He was a hero of American culture and a famous success in a nation that worshiped success....
'"I think it's fine that there is a Miss [Ayn] Rand who comes out stoutly for the conservative. I think it's fine that we have all kinds of thinkers in the world. . . . I admit that the majority of writers in this country are on the liberal side."
'But he added, of Rand: "We need her to hold us back, and I think she needs us to pull her forward."...
'Wallace: "The public does rarely get anything but a liberal viewpoint from Hollywood or from television, from Broadway," and the charge can be "safely made that there is a certain intolerance of conservative ideas among liberals."
'Hammerstein, again undefensive: "I think so too."
'What's to be done about it? Nothing, said Hammerstein: "Just be yourself, that's all." If the public likes Miss Rand, "there will be a Miss Rand trend." Let the problem work its way out in a free country....
'Moral modesty and candor are good to see.
'In our public figures, especially our political ones, they are hard to find. I offer Hammerstein's old words as an example--a prompter--of what they sound like.'
Civilisations isn't 'dumbed down' - it's too intellectual | Coffee House
Charles Moore reviews the new "Civlisations" TV series:
"It is quite right to study the differences and similarities between civilisations, but it is a curious feature of the human mind that this is best done if first acquainted thoroughly with a single tradition. Then one has a secure enough sense of a whole to be able to read across. Without this, one is darting here, there and everywhere. The best comparative bit of the series was Schama's account of Turkish and Mughal art interacting with western art of the period (and vice versa). This is because the connections are visible, not contrived. I think the series was doomed by its premise that one has to scour the whole world in order to think about civilisation at all. It is really the other way round: one thinks outwards from one's own smaller space.
"The failures of this brave attempt have made me think of a different way that a television account of civilisation could be constructed. It would try to identify the main components of civilisation and give each one a programme -- language and writing; government and law; industry, trade and money; science and technology; the arts; love and family; institutions and universities; war; above all, religion, the central impulse of all civilisations until, perhaps, our own."
The Secular Benedict Option | The American Conservative
Nicholas Phillips, president of the NYU School of Law Federalist Society, writes:
"For those who aren't religious, the Benedict Option raises as many questions as it answers. We know that the choose-your-own-adventurism at the heart of the progressive project is hollow and alienating, but is there anything comprehensive enough to replace it? ....if we're not doing expressive individualism, what will we do instead?...
"This is the secular Benedict Option. While American society continues to drug itself into a tech-enabled stupor, conservatives must save authentic human connection and experience. It can't be done at the individual level alone: that's too hard. Instead, we need communities full of people that have opted out together.
"Imagine neighborhoods or even whole towns governed by covenantal commitments to refuse social media and virtual reality. Imagine schools in which parents feel no anxiety about refusing their children smartphones because every other parent has signed an identical pledge. Imagine restaurants and public spaces that prohibit device usage. Imagine a great re-norming in which the time we rescue from our screens is spent rediscovering lost arts: craft, conversation, connection."
The state has a terrible secret: it kidnaps our children | Louise Tickle | Opinion | The Guardian
'High court judge Mr Justice Keehan, in a scathing judgment earlier this year at Nottingham family court, revealed that at least 16 children have been "wrongly and abusively" looked after by Herefordshire council, under something called a section 20 arrangement, for "wholly inappropriate" periods of time. For one boy, that was the first nine years of his life after he was born to his 14-year-old mother. For another boy it was eight years, from the age of eight to 16, despite his mother on several occasions withdrawing her consent. Shockingly, at the time of the judgment, 14 children were still being wrongfully looked after by Herefordshire on section 20 arrangements, despite the local authority knowing full well the judge's displeasure.
'These are not court orders. They must be a voluntary agreement, and in legal terms they precisely mirror the situation where the single parent consented (at first) to her friend looking after her boys. For a section 20 to be legal, social workers must be certain they have a parent's informed consent to their child being accommodated by the state. And a parent can withdraw consent at any time, because they keep full parental responsibility. If Mum or Dad wants to turn up at a foster carer's house at midnight without notice and take their child home, they can. No ifs, no buts. But many parents say social workers threaten that if they do, it will mean a trip to court for a care order. There is no surer way to scare the living daylights out of a parent. And so frightened acquiescence - not the same as consent - tends to be the result.'
An Enduring Error | City Journal
"The Kerner Commission hinted at, but never pursued, the most likely explanation for the disorder: 'the unfulfilled expectations aroused by the great legislative and judicial victories of the Civil Rights Movement and the dramatic struggle for equal rights in the South.' Those expectations were overwhelmingly economic. Martin Luther King himself fused the civil rights movement with efforts to promote black gains in the workplace. Coming to the aid of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis, King declared: 'Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality.' And President Johnson, in an extraordinary speech at Howard University, declared that the 'next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights' would seek 'not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.' This sort of talk by national leaders raised expectations beyond anything that government and the law were capable of providing. It is much easier to legislate rights than jobs or wealth. Civil rights laws could ensure that blacks may be seated at lunch counters, but they could not guarantee that blacks would own or manage those establishments.
"In one sense, the Kerner Report reflected the liberal optimism of its era: federal programs to provide job training, social welfare, and slum clearance would right the wrongs of racism, it was widely believed. But in its bleak analysis and failure to account for the profound changes that had already been set in motion, the report also signaled the liberal pessimism that has become predominant on racial matters ever since. It's easier to see, looking back 50 years later, that the United States was headed in the right direction. The great crusade for civil rights not only drove down residential segregation; it also created opportunities for genuine African-American socioeconomic advancement. Yet the Kerner Report remains somehow deathless, its erroneous predictions taken as prophecy, its misguided prescriptions still blocking more constructive approaches to the problems that remain."
The Civilization That Soared and Enlivened the World | The American Conservative
This is an excellent summary of the foundations and accomplishments fo Western Civilization. Robert Merry's essay doesn't shy away from Western Civ's dark side, but explains why it is nevertheless worthy of study, celebration, and preservation:
"I like Western Civilization. No, actually I revere it. I think it represents one of the great chapters in human history and a gift not just to the peoples of the West but to many others throughout the world.
"...much of this assault on the Western heritage is really a political maneuver to favor the so-called victim class (anyone whose ancestors suffered at the hands of the West) against the so-called privileged class (those whose ancestors imposed the suffering). It's a brilliant ploy, and it's working in many quarters, particularly on college campuses. But it has little to do with any reasoned interpretation of history.
"So I'm just not going to join the effort to undermine our civilization's cultural identity from within. The West has my respect and devotion. I don't care what anybody says."
The best safety device in any aircraft is a well-trained crew. The worst is buggy software and no manual backstop to
"Within a minute, the plane's autopilot disconnects. It forces Sullivan to take manual control of Qantas Flight 72, carrying 303 passengers and 12 crew from Singapore to Perth. Five seconds later, stall and over-speed warnings begin blaring. St-aaa-ll, st-aaa-ll, they screech. The over-speed warnings are louder, sounding like a fire bell. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Caution messages light up the instrument panel.
"'That's not right,' Sullivan exclaims to Hales, who he met for the first time earlier in the day on a bus taking crew from a Singapore hotel to Changi Airport. His reasoning is simple: how can the plane stall and over-speed at the same time? The aircraft is telling him it is flying at both maximum and minimum speeds. Barely 30 seconds earlier, nothing was untoward. He can see the horizon through the cockpit windows and cross-check instruments to determine that the plane is flying as it should.
"In the cockpit, Sullivan instinctively grabs the control stick the moment he feels the plane's nose pitch down violently at 12.42pm (Western Australia time). The former US Navy fighter pilot pulls back on the stick to thwart the jet's rapid descent, bracing himself against an instrument panel shade. Nothing happens. So he lets go. Pulling back on the stick does not halt the plunge. If the plane suddenly returns control, pulling back might worsen their situation by pitching the nose up and causing a dangerous stall.
"Within two seconds, the plane dives 150 feet. In a gut-wrenching moment, all the two pilots can see through the cockpit window is the blue of the Indian Ocean. 'Is my life going to end here today?' Sullivan asks himself. His heart is thumping. Those on board QF72 are in dire trouble. There are no ejection seats like the combat jets Sullivan flew in the US Navy. He has no control over this plane. "
The Original Sin of Stanford Dining
The recommendations for improving the cost and quality of campus meals includes an interesting history of student dining at Stanford, and the reasons the campus shifted from a free-market model to a centralized approach in the 1920s.
"As one student summarized last year in a Daily article, the meal plan is 'designed to edge people out of breakfast, [make students] eat [dinner] absurdly early' and to force them to satiate hunger at Late Night, giving even more money to the University. Meal plans run students $6,169 per year; meanwhile, meal plans at nearby Santa Clara University cost 13.5 percent less, only $5,436 per year.
"Stanford is in dire need of the forces of competition in its food supply to spur innovation and lower costs. How? Throw out the mandate for students living on campus to buy meal plans. Remove the outmoded limitations on food providers, like the prohibition of food trucks. Shut down Stanford Dining, the food service arm of Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE), and simply lease dining hall space to third party vendors."
Same-Sex Parenting: The Child Maltreatment No One Mentions - Crisis Magazine
"In comparison to children with opposite-sex parents, children in the care of same-sex couples, were: almost twice as likely to have a developmental disability; almost twice as likely to have had medical treatment for an emotional problem and three times as likely to have had medicine prescribed for a psychological condition in the past year before the study; ten times more likely to have been sexually touched by a parent or other adult and four times more likely to have been forced to have sex against their will; less likely, when reaching adolescence, to have romantic relationships or to see themselves in a future relationship involving pregnancy or marriage (which suggests that their situation influences them away from relationships with the opposite sex); twice as likely, when becoming adults, to suffer from depression and four times as likely to consider suicide; more likely to use tobacco and marijuana and to have been arrested and then pled guilty of a crime; and three times more likely to be unemployed, receiving public assistance, or if later married to have had adulterous relationships. By the time women who had grown up in same-sex headed households reached age thirty, they were only half as likely to be married or in a relationship lasting three or more years and only a third as likely to have ever been pregnant....
"An article in Mercator.Net about Sullins's work explains the air-tightness of his research methods and also notes that the mainline social science journals have been strikingly silent about the review procedures used for the harm-denial articles they routinely run.
"Even if further research makes the harm of same-sex parenting indisputable--which, to this social scientist, is virtually so already--don't expect mainstream social science to accept it. Ideology has long-since replaced true scholarship there--they are blind followers masquerading as independent thinkers at the cutting edge."
