The Death of Diversity

A funny thing happened on the way to the publisher for political scientist Robert Putnam.

His research didn't support his hypothesis.

That isn't earth-shattering; it happens to the best of scientists. What's interesting is that his hypothesis was that diversity made communities more open and better.

What he found was that the more ethnically diverse a community is, "the less likely the residents are to trust anyone--from their next door neighbor to the mayor."

The core message of the research was that, "in the presence of diversity, we hunker down", he said. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us."

Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most diverse human habitation in human history", but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where "diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians’ picnic".

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. "They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions," said Prof Putnam. "The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching."

I'm not sure I believe that diversity is the reason people don't trust each other so much. I have no scientific evidence to back up my conclusion, but could it be that our attitudes about various groups is affected by television news and entertainment? By other information sources? Could it be that "I vant to be alone" isn't just a Greta Garbo line?

I've lived in some fairly ethnically diverse areas in my life, and I've lived in some rather homogeneous ones, as well. I can't say I trust any of my neighbors now less than I trusted neighbors 20 years ago when I lived in a different area. And I've always had a healthy skepticism when it came to government, local or national.

It would be nice if the outcome of Putnam's study were that all the diversity garbage would go away. It would be terrific if we weren't constantly bombarded with the idea that white people are racists if they don't seem thrilled with diversity, or minorities are just ignorant if they don't embrace other cultures willingly.

But I doubt any of that will happen. Instead, we'll be put through even more diversity training where we'll be told how much more accepting and open we will be if we just expose ourselves to this group or that. Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal puts it this way:

The diversity ideologues deserve whatever ill tidings they get. They're the ones who weren't willing to persuade the public of diversity's merits, preferring to turn "diversity" into a political and legal hammer to compel compliance. The conversions were forced conversions. As always, with politics comes pushback. And it never stops.

The harvest of bitter fruit from the diversity wars begun three decades ago across campuses, corporations and newsrooms has made the immigration debate significantly worse. Diversity's advocates gave short shrift to assimilation, indeed arguing that assimilation into the American mainstream was oppressive and coercive. So they demoted assimilation and elevated "differences." Then they took the nation to court. Little wonder the immigration debate is riven with distrust.

We need to accept the idea that assimilation isn't a dirty word; it's the way communities are built. That's why certain communities have certain characteristics. But the United States should have certain characteristics, too, which is why emphasizing our differences--rather than our similarities--tears at our national spirit.

Leave Your Politics at the Front Door

That's the gist of Seattle Times' Executive Editor Dave Boardman's memo to staff yesterday.

Apparently, when Karl Rove's imminent departure was announced at the daily news meeting, "several people in the meeting started cheering."

"That sort of expression is simply not appropriate for a newsroom....As we head into a major political year, now's a good time to remember: Please keep your personal politics to yourself."

I would like it if people in the newsroom kept their political opinions to themselves all the time, personally. It's difficult for reporters and editors to claim neutrality or objectivity when their political biases are on display...particularly in front of outsiders. Evidently, chief political reporter David Postman discussed the incident on his blog.

"I wasn't there, but I've talked to several people who were. It was only a couple of people who cheered and they, thankfully, are not among the people who get a say in news play. But obviously news staff shouldn't be cheering or jeering the day's news, particularly as Boardman points out, 'when we have an outside guest in the room.'"

Yes, God forbid it become apparent to "outsiders" what newsroom staff really think. They might write about it and subscribers might decide to cancel, after all.

What's James Carville Smoking?

You have to wonder if Carville has completely lost his mind after reading this bit of wishful thinking in the Financial Times.

Carville claims that Karl Rove has lost a generation of voters to the Democratic Party.

A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points. Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government.

It should be noted that Democracy Corps is headed by...James Carville (along with Democrat pollster Stanley Greenberg).

I guess Carville's blathering would have more credence were it not so self-serving. It's not difficult to predict that Democrats will recapture the White House in 2008. Historically, the party that has held the presidency for two consecutive terms tends to lose it. So, Karl Rove "losing" young people may not even be a factor. People tend to vote for change after eight years with one party.

My biggest problem with Carville's argument (that young people prefer Democrats) is two-fold.

First, fewer young people vote. According to Civic Youth, only 47% of 18-24-year-olds voted in the 2004 presidential election. And while that sounds good, when only 70% of the U.S. population is even registered to vote, it doesn't look nearly as impressive. According to Carville's Democracy Corps propaganda--er, study, young people 18-31 will outnumber the baby boom generation and, therefore, are a significant demographic group. That will probably be true as this group ages, but since most of them don't vote now, there's plenty of time for them to change party affiliation.

Which brings me to my second point: people tend to become more conservative as they age. This isn't to say that "all" people become more conservative or that even large percentages swing to the right. But life experiences tend to make people more conservative. Why?

I used to discuss this with friends in law school this way: when you are young, you don't own anything. You don't have any (or very much) money. You believe there is a lot of injustice in the world and it should be fixed. How to fix it? Create laws against various discrimination and raise taxes on the rich so they pay their "fair share."

The problem is, when you don't own anything, talking about taking money from one group to give to another is an abstract concept. When you're the person earning the money, it's no longer an abstract concept. It's actually taking what you worked for to give to someone else who didn't do what you did. And when this is done against your will, we call this theft or taxation.

As we age, we advance in careers and earn more money. We get married, have kids, buy property, and create better lives. It is through these experiences that we become more conservative. It's not because we're greedy but because when you work and save, you think you should be allowed to keep what you get.

This is part of the reason people become more conservative as they age: they become more invested in the system as they work through it. Want tax breaks? Do things that get tax breaks (have kids, buy a house). Work hard and get promotions based on merit.

Carville is probably correct that this group will make a fearsome voting bloc eventually. But I doubt that it will be a Democrat voting bloc. Once the laws liberals want to put into place start pinching them, they will probably vote the scoundrels out.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

Pants Judge Doesn't Learn

Some people don't learn their lessons. The pants judge is obviously one of those people. In fact, he's appealing the lower court decision.

What's worse, Pearson filed the appeal the day after the dry cleaners, in good faith, withdrew their motion to force Pearson to pay $82,000 in attorney's fees.

Pearson is soldiering on after losing a two-day bench trial in June where he wept over his missing pants, which he'd had altered because he gained weight while he was unemployed before becoming an administrative law judge in 2005.

Chris Manning, the Chungs' attorney, released a statement Tuesday: "The Chungs have done everything possible to put this nightmare behind them and return to their normal lives. They have won resoundingly at trial, raised donations from gracious private donors to pay for their litigation costs, let Mr. Pearson off the hook for personally paying their expenses and extended an olive branch to Mr. Pearson in hopes that he would end this matter and not appeal."

Manning added that Pearson has chosen "desperate irrationality over common sense and decided to appeal, unnecessarily costing the parties more wasted time and the D.C. taxpayers more wasted money."

Maybe Pearson likes being the poster boy for tort reform. He obviously doesn't care that this silliness will probably cost him his job.

High Today: 104, Low: 80

Summer finally hits Texas.

Tightening the Noose

Anyone who's paid any attention to politics in the last six months knows how unhappy the nutroots are with the newly elected Democrats.

The problem isn't just that Republicans have snookered Democrats repeatedly by using procedural measures to block their agenda. The problem is that many of the Democrats elected under the Rahm Emanuel elect-a-Republican-lite approach.

As one story so wholesomely put it:

The so-called Blue Dogs like to think of themselves as Republican-lite. They come from mostly Southern and Western districts. They usually speak with a little bit of a drawl. They listen to country music. They are much more Sam Rayburn and much less Tip O’Neill, although Tip would have appreciated their mostly pro-life stances.

I'm surprised the author didn't say they're missing Mayberry:

Sitting on the porch drinking ice-cold cherry Coke
Where everything is black and white
duh na na na na na na na na
Picking on a six string
Where people pass by and you call them by their first name
Watching the clouds roll by
Bye, bye

The fact is, blue dog Democrats were elected from districts that have voted Republican for several cycles. These aren't screaming, anti-war fanatics, whacko environmentalists, or people who think spending an extra billion of taxpayer money is going to solve problems that are essentially personal in nature. They are people who have sent their sons and daughters off to war and may be disillusioned with that adventure. They're people who looked at the photos of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath and thought the federal government "should have done more sooner." They're people who are frustrated with the GOP, who always said they were for fiscal restraint but who loved pork barrel spending as much as Democrats.

In other words, you can change the party affiliation of the person elected, but that doesn't mean the electorate has changed.

But the nutroots are furious that these blue dogs aren't voting with Grandma Pelosi and Harry Reid to end the war NOW, embarrass the president, and rescind the Patriot Act. Worse still, some of these blue dogs actually voted to extend FISA. How dare they!

So, what's a nutroot to do?

First, you start with threatening them.

It's not much to put up some google ads criticizing these members for their position on FISA. The way Google adwords works is that the ad will only show up for the search terms we select. That means that if we select 'Chris Carney', then people searching for Chris Carney (PA-04) will see an ad criticizing Chris Carney for his vote on FISA. And the people who are searching for Chris Carney are people who want to know more about Carney, like reporters, activists, and constituents. We can even geotarget his state, so only people in Pennsylvania see the ad.

It'll probably run around $100-150 per member for a six month period, which is the amount of time until the law must be reauthorized.

It's hard for me to believe that the constituents that elected Carney disagree with his vote on FISA. Why? Because new Congressmen are more attuned to the desires of their districts than fossils who have been in office for 30 years and think they are invincible. If Carney voted for FISA, that means he thinks more people in his district want him to vote that way.

The problem for the nutroots is that Congressmen always have to go home. They are accountable to the guy that pulls the lever in the voting booth, not the shrieking voices on the internet.

Young (at Heart) Love

A friend of mine sent me this story from the San Antonio Express-News about a couple who hit it off at their 70th class reunion and just got married.

On Saturday, in the soft light of a tall stained-glass window at Trinity Baptist Church, the radiant couple stood side by side and exchanged wedding vows. The bride wore a lacy white gown, her hair piled high and crowned with a sparkling rhinestone tiara. The groom stood beside her looking smart in a black tuxedo with a French cut. Both are 89 years old.

Maybe as I get older I love these stories about old people falling in love and getting hitched. The couples are always so romantic, just how you remember falling in love.

The couple seems giddy. Every morning, they coordinate their outfits to match. Offer makes coffee for her while she reads the newspaper to him. Driving in the car, they always hold hands. They linger over breakfasts at a neighborhood diner, just the two of them talking, sometimes stopping only when they notice the lunch crowd has arrived. And in one of the greatest benchmarks of his affection, Offer has even taken to watching Mahan's soap opera.

Love is always an amazing thing to watch, whether the couple is 16, 30, or 89.

Karl Rove to Leave White House

I guess Karl Rove has had enough of being compared to Satan and has decided to call it quits.

And who can blame him? I mean, what more is there to accomplish once you have your own whack-a-mole contest? Why stay after you're pelted by idiots?

The Left is jubilant. They can't decide whether to laugh or laugh some more.

Sounds like the moonbats are bitter that they didn't get to see Rove frog-marched for Fitzmas (remember that one?).

Ah, well. The Left will now have to find a new Karl Rove to hate. After all, Karl Rove was the new Roger Ailes to hate, don't ya know. Time for the bottom feeders to move on to the next sensation.

UPDATE: Dana has more moonbat reactions at his fine site.

Pants Judge Tries to Avoid Paying Dry Cleaners' Legal Fees

When you're cheap, you're cheap. And the administrative law judge who sued the dry cleaner for $54 million because they lost his pants is cheap.

Via Patterico's Pontifications, we discover that Roy Pearson doesn't think he should have to pay the legal fees of the dry cleaners he sued.

Why not? Pearson wasn't interested in either justice or mercy when he sued the cleaners, even after they offered to pay him several times the cost of the pants. Pearson thought the emotional distress he caused the family was perfectly acceptable because he'd been inconvenienced, dammit!

By the time the case went to trial in June, Pearson had reduced his demand -- to $54 million. Members of the tort reform movement decried the case as an example of all that is wrong with America's legal system. Late-night comedians ridiculed Pearson. And other judges shook their heads in bewilderment.

The judge overseeing the trial, Judith Bartnoff, was, in the end, no more sympathetic. In a 23-page ruling a couple of weeks later, Bartnoff found for Soo and Jin Chung, the owners of the cleaners, saying Pearson was not entitled to a single cent.

That was only the beginning of Pearson's troubles. The Chungs' attorneys, Christopher C.S. Manning and Melinda A. Sossamon, filed a post-trial motion seeking $82,772 in legal fees from Pearson to sanction him for prosecuting what they considered a frivolous lawsuit.

Pearson's submission yesterday replied to the Chungs' requests, which, he said, lack factual or legal support. The fact that his case was allowed to go forward, he said, raises legitimate legal questions.

Beyond that, Pearson said, the Chungs have been so successful at raising money for their defense that any money from him would amount to "a windfall, not compensation."

Pearson's suit was the worst form of bullying and heavy-handedness. He deserves to have to pay the Chungs' legal fees.

The Problem of Objectivity

Kevin Drum has a piece in Washington Monthly discussing this Mark Kleiman post on the problem with objectivity in journalism.

The original post deals with how one handles situations like this in a news story.

On the darker side, a group identifying itself as Iowa-based U.S. Christians for Truth distributed pamphlets attacking Romney for being a Mormon.

Is it objective to say this is "on the darker side"? That was the question Kleiman asked and answered,

To put it bluntly, that's considered OK in an "objective" news story only because the group involved isn't rich or powerful. Thomma's editors wouldn't let him get away with using that phrase to introduce an account of Rudy's latest claim that Democrats don't believe in defending the country.

That said, it's hard to figure out what Thomma should have done. To report bigoted statements "straight," without comment, is to put them on the same level as other sorts of statements.

Personally, I think reporting whacko statements straight often points out the whackiness of the statement. If a group claims Jesus Christ wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney because he's a Mormon, I think that statement allows the reader to figure out how sane or crazy the proponent is.

But Drum asks a better question: who gets to decide how we objectively cover events? Reporters? Editors? Publishers? Readers?

It's a sticky wicket, to be sure. I tend to come down on the side of reporters; it is their names on the byline, after all. But, as we all know, reporters are frequently not objective, even when they pretend they are.

Take abortion stories. Most reporters consider objectivity to be having the exact same number of quotes from both pro-choice and pro-life groups. But not all quotes are the same. If the quotes from one side come from someone who sounds like they didn't take their medication for a few days, while the other side sounds polished and professional, the reader comes away with a particular impression of the debate.

Similarly, not all stories about a hot-button issue deserve the "balanced number of quotes" approach. If, for example, the story is about a pro-choice rally, does it matter that much what pro-lifers say about it? What about a pro-life film shown to receptive audiences? Should the "other side" always get equal mention, even when they aren't the story?

There's no one right answer to the question of objectivity. Every kid in Reporting I will tell you that words have particular meanings and that bias slips in by means of them. Trying to figure out how to objectively cover every story is supposed to be part of the journalist's training.

Resentment of the Soft Woman

Ann Althouse has a comment on this New York Times piece on a woman who resents the life she chose.

She calls her marriage a good one. She also has the benefit of a once-a-week housecleaner and had live-in help while the couple’s two children were growing up. She did not pursue a tenure track because she wanted to be more available for her children while they were growing up...

"Men lock the door and leave. Things could be a wreck or whatever and it doesn’t affect their other world," [said NY lawyer Dawn Santana]. "I walk out and worry about the house looking nice, because the kids have play dates, etc. Someone has to worry about that, and it’s usually not the dad."

Ann rightly takes this woman to task for whining about the choices she made. Lets' face it. This isn't the 1950s when there were certain expectations that women had to do certain things once they married and had children. We don't fire women for being pregnant, after all.

I figure there are going to be a lot more of these mid-life feminists coming out of the woodwork: women who chose to stay home with their kids because they knew it was better for them and that the family could afford for the mother not to work. These same women, at 45 or 50, look back and realize they probably won't make partner in a law firm no matter how hard they try now, nor will they reach CEO. And they are bitter that the Enjoli ad was just another way to sell perfume.

Bernie Goldberg in his book Bias pointed out that daycare is one of those third-rail issues the media doesn't like to talk about in an objective manner. This is very true, and I'll even agree with Echidne that "working mother bad" stories get way more play.

But here's the deal: life is full of choices, and for women, those choices are very complicated. You go to school. You get a degree. You meet Mr. Right and get married. Then you want to have kids. What then? Do you stay home and raise the kids or work and put the kids in daycare? Either way, your choices are tough.

If you stay home, you spend 15-20 years not using whatever degree you got, so it's virtually worthless by the time you go back to work. And no employer considers motherhood to be equal experience with time spent on the job, even though moms exhibit virtually every quality necessary for business on a daily basis. You wonder if you are wasting your life, and, if you resent it, if you are just being selfish.

If you go back to work, you juggle getting the kids to and from daycare while you work anywhere from 6 to 12 hours (or more) a day. You have pictures on your desk of children someone else is raising, and you wonder constantly what they (and you) are doing. You tell yourself that 15 minutes of "quality time" really does equal being there all day, even though you know deep inside this can't logically be true.

And the choices these days aren't really any better for men. If they work hard and long so their wives can stay home with the kids, they are workaholics who don't care about the family. If they refuse to work overtime or take jobs with more money but more travel time, they are "unmotivated."

The difference, as Ann points out, is that most men are better at compartmentalizing their emotions, which allows them to focus on work at work and not worry about whether the house is clean enough or all the laundry is done.

We've come a long way, baby. In some ways. But women are still complaining even when they can make almost any choice they want.

The $10 Million Cheese

A man is suing McDonald's for $10 million because they put cheese on his hamburger.

The man says he bit into a hamburger and had a severe allergic reaction to the cheese melted on it.

Jeromy Jackson, who is in his early 20s, says he clearly ordered two Quarter Pounders without cheese at the McDonald's restaurant in Star City before heading to Clarksburg.

His mother Trela Jackson and friend Andrew Ellifritz are parties to the lawsuit because they say they risked their lives rushing Jeromy to United Hospital Center in Clarksburg.

Why would a guy who is supposedly severely allergic to cheese bite into a hamburger without checking it? Even if, as these people claim, Jackson repeatedly requested the hamburger without cheese, why risk his life for a hamburger?

I don't have any severe allergies, but I know when I ask for a burger a particular way, I check the burger before I bite into it. Then I get it fixed if necessary.

According to the story, McDonald's has offered to pay half the medical bills for treatment (about $700), then offered to pay all medical bills.

But it sounds like Jackson is looking for the hot coffee payoff. Didn't he learn anything from this guy?

Iraq War Czar Says We Should Consider a Draft

Via CNN:

Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute is the president's war adviser. Several retired generals turned down the post.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

"And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," said Lute, who is sometimes referred to as the "Iraq war czar." It was his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

Reinstating a draft would be disastrous. Avoiding the draft was the biggest reason--and most successful reason--for protests during the Vietnam War. After President Richard Nixon repealed the draft, protests to the war dropped significantly.

Although conscription was de rigueur throughout American history, flashpoints such as the Civil War and Vietnam created rebellions against the practice.

One of the outstanding features of the current conflict is the all-volunteer nature of our army. As I stated back in this post, claims that our army is disproportionately poor and black are untrue. And as this story points out, without the draft as a focal point, peace protests don't have the same punch.

Needless to say, the nutroots and their commenters have grabbed onto Lute's statements with hope (see here, here, and here).

Another Man Bites Dog Story: Americans Think Journalists Are Biased

The latest Pew survey is out and it doesn't tell us anything that we don't already know: Americans don't trust the press.

Specific to this poll, more Americans who get their news from the internet don't trust the press.

The internet news audience – roughly a quarter of all Americans – tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. As many as 38% of those who rely mostly on the internet for news say they have an unfavorable opinion of cable news networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, compared with 25% of the public overall, and just 17% of television news viewers.

The internet news audience is particularly likely to criticize news organizations for their lack of empathy, their failure to "stand up for America," and political bias. Roughly two-thirds (68%) of those who get most of their news from the internet say that news organizations do not care about the people they report on, and 53% believe that news organizations are too critical of America. By comparison, smaller percentages of the general public fault the press for not caring about people they report on (53%), and being too critical of America (43%).

These findings aren't really surprising. From Rathergate to the Scott Beauchamp debacle, bloggers have been crucial in debunking various media myths. Those who get their news from internet sources have every reason to distrust the MSM. The bias of traditional media becomes more apparent every day.

This isn't to say that all internet news sources are the same. I wouldn't say, for example, that the 9/11 truthers are harbingers of truth. But, for the most part, people who get their news off the internet seem to be more current and informed than people who don't, partcularly about certain issues.

Cable news is notoriously bad for giving the impression of presenting lots of news when, in fact, they are producing the same stories over and over again. And, as has been pointed out (although in a rather partisan manner) with Fox News, they make errors (calling people Democrats who are Republicans, for example). Perhaps that's the nature of breaking news; there will always be corrections and misinformation that make it to print or broadcast.

But the Pew study shows that most people tolerate the occasional mistake, particularly when it is acknowledged. What they definitely dislike is bias, where a story isn't told in a manner that is fair to all sides. Republicans are more likely to see bias than Democrats.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted July 25-29 among 1,503 adults, finds a continuing pattern of deep partisan differences in public views of news organizations and their performance. Far more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats say news organizations are too critical of America (63% vs. 23%), and there is virtually no measure of press values or performance on which there is not a substantial gap in the views of partisans.

There's not really anything unusual in the findings, other than the idea that viewers are becoming more critical and more partisan. I think this might be a result of our 24/7 news and opinion cycle. There's so much information and opinion to be had that few bogus stories florish. As Michelle Malkin noted, think how different history would have been had the internet been around when John Kerry was speaking on Vietnam to Congress.

Taxation, According to the Founding Fathers

I always like when liberals resort to the argument that the Founding Fathers would agree with them if the Constitution were written today because whatever they are advocating is just so sensible.

This argument for the "living Constitution" interpretation comes up in a variety of circumstances from abortion to free speech to religion and so on. And this includes taxation. Would the Founding Fathers approve of the tax system we have today?

Evidently, Thomas Jefferson would not. Via Patriot Post:

"For example. If the system be established on basis of Income, and his just proportion on that scale has been already drawn from every one, to step into the field of Consumption, and tax special articles in that, as broadcloth or homespun, wine or whiskey, a coach or a wagon, is doubly taxing the same article. For that portion of Income with which these articles are purchased, having already paid its tax as Income, to pay another tax on the thing it purchased, is paying twice for the same thing; it is an aggrievance on the citizens who use these articles in exoneration of those who do not, contrary to the most sacred of the duties of a government, to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens."

I guess Jefferson would not have approved of the VAT or sales tax.

American Attitudes Shift with Military Successes

Back on this post, a reader was aghast that I actually said that more Americans are supporting the war than in previous polls.

"How can you say Americans support the war?!" was asked.

I can say that because the poll numbers support it. And guess what? Here's another story discussing the shift in attitudes after military successes.

This isn't to say that we have smooth sailing from here on out. The Iraqi government is doing a terrible job politically of creating a functioning society. But that doesn't mean Americans aren't hopeful.

The Health Care Question Nobody Really Wants to Answer

Maybe I'm just seeing a lot of health care-related news lately. Or maybe there really is a lot of health care-related news lately. For one thing, several presidential candidates are talking about health care, so we know it's likely to be a big issue in the '08 election.

But who pays and how? Health care always has a cost. It just depends on whose pocket is picked to pay for it.

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has proposed the Healthy Wisconsin initiative which would create a statewide catastrophic reinsurance program. And while the Wall Street Journal hated the idea, John Stossel thinks it's an excellent idea...as an object lesson for the nation.

Wisconsin's Capital Times reports that "two-thirds of Wisconsin residents support the Democratic plan -- even when presented with opponents' arguments that it would be a 'job killer' that could lead to higher taxes ... Said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, one of the plan's sponsors, 'Everything we have heard [against the plan], we put in the poll. And it still comes back at 67 percent approval.'"

That's why America needs "Healthy Wisconsin." The fall of the Soviet Union deprived us of the biggest example of how socialism works. We need laboratories of failure to demonstrate what socialism is like. All we have now is Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the U.S. Post Office, and state motor-vehicle departments.

Personally, I think if the citizens of Wisconsin want this plan, then I have no right to deny it to them.

The one argument that gets made frequently about socialized medicine is that all should participate. That way everybody pays and nobody pays too much. But a lot of people--young people--don't think they will get sick, so they don't buy insurance. And don't just take my word for it. This Reuters story says the same thing.

Adults aged 19 to 29 are the biggest group of the newly uninsured, according to an independent research group's report released on Wednesday

That age group made up 30 percent of the 45 million Americans without health insurance in 2005, according to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

Young adults, many who are just entering the workforce and can't afford the high cost of individual insurance, are the big drivers of an increase in uninsured adults, the report said...

U.S. Census and other data cited by the report show 40 percent of the uninsured young are in households earning less than the federal poverty level.

That 40% figure looks bad. Except the story doesn't include the fact that these are the years when young adults go to college. So, while their income isn't always much, their expenses are even less. There's a big difference between a college student who waits tables on weekends for pizza and beer money and a single mom of 4 kids. But these stories about how many people are uninsured never account for why so many people don't have health insurance.

Young people can almost always afford health insurance. But they don't buy it. Why? Because they don't think anything serious will ever happen to them. And whatever does happen, they can just run down to the local CareNow and get it taken care of for 50 bucks.

But government insurance programs need young, healthy people to participate, too. Why? Because they have to help pay for the cholesterol medication, heart medicines, surgeries, treatments, and therapies of their parents and grandparents. But programs like Healthy Wisconsin don't advertise this part of the plan. Usually, they emphasize that health care costs will go down because of preventive care.

Socialized medicine supporters like the idea of preventive care. They think if smoking cessation treatments and mammograms are free, then health care costs will go down. But the New York Times has a story saying this isn't actually the case.

Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor and economist at Stanford’s School of Medicine, estimates that to prevent one new case of diabetes, an antiobesity program must treat five people — "not cheaply," he says. Along the same lines, Mr. Gruber found that when retirees in California began visiting their doctor less often and filling fewer prescriptions, overall medical spending fell. People did get sick more often, but treating their illnesses was still less costly than widespread basic care — in the form of doctors visits and drugs. Louise Russell, an economist at Rutgers, points out that programs that focus on at-risk patients cost the least, but even they are rarely free.

As Dr. Mark R. Chassin, a former New York state health commissioner, says, preventive care "reduces costs, yes, for the individual who didn’t get sick."

"But that savings is overwhelmed by the cost of continuously treating everybody else."

The actual savings are also not as large as might at first seem. Even if you don’t develop diabetes, your lifetime medical costs won’t drop to zero. You might live longer and better and yet still ultimately run up almost as big a lifetime medical bill, because you’ll eventually have other problems. That would be an undeniably better outcome, but it wouldn’t produce a financial windfall for society.

There's always a cost to medicine. The fact that we expect more care for less money creates the demand for cheaper services. How do we balance this desire for low costs versus the demand for expensive care?

Why Open Borders Hurt Republicans

David Frum has caught a lot of flak from lefty bloggers for this column which explained why immigration--and the sort of immigration policies favored by the President--hurts Republicans.

In the past, Republicans could win elections despite their unpopularity among ethnic minorities. But with the huge surge of immigration since 1980 - and especially since 2000 - the voting map of the United States has been redrawn in ways inherently deeply unfavorable to the GOP. If Republicans face an inhospitable future after 2008, we will hear much of the dreadful legacy of George W. Bush on social issues, the war, the environment, etc. But Greenberg's own work makes clear that these issues matter relatively little.

(Only 28% of young voters would respond positively to an anti-religious-right message, for example: see page 11.)

No, the legacy that will damage his party is the legacy of immigration non-enforcement. This has imported a large new community of people who are both economically struggling (and thus open to Democratic arguments) but who lack deep attachment to the American nation (and who are thus immune to the most potent of Republican appeals). It is these voters who will sway elections in future. And thanks to this president's immigration policies, there are going to be a lot more of them than there might otherwise have been.

It seems to me like these are logical arguments for why loosened immigration regulations hurts the GOP. Living in Texas, you rub elbows quite frequently with both recent immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America and also families that have been here for generations. And the truth is, even people who can trace their American family tree back generations before mine do not trust Republicans when it comes to immigration. It doesn't matter whether they agree with Republicans on other domestic issues, many Hispanics are as one-issue as a pro-lifer.

Unfortunately, Frum pointing out this unpleasant truth--that immigrants tend to favor Democrats--won him the gold medal in racial politics: Racist!

On his blog, historian Rick Perlstein commented that my post

is the most explicit argument I've seen in some time on the part of a "respected" conservative that only white people count as Americans.

There's nothing in Frum's statement about only white people counting. He merely points out that recent immigrants tend to vote for Democrats. That's hardly the same thing.

Then Frum quotes from his new book:

People who feel in some way disaffected from or alienated from the American mainstream are the people most likely to vote Democratic.

Democratic voters are substantially less likely than Republicans to describe themselves as "very patriotic." Democratic voters express less confidence than Republicans in America's ability to solve problems as a nation. Democratic voters feel less personally optimistic. Democratic voters, of all colors, are more likely to blame others for their troubles. For what it's worth, Democratic votes are less likely to fly an American flag.

And using data from PublicAgenda.org, Frum's conclusion about recent immigrants, specifically from Mexico, are valid.

* Mexican immigrants are significantly less likely than other immigrants to cite "freedom" as something they value in the United States - or as a reason for their desire to migrate.

* They are significantly less likely than other immigrants to agree that immigrants should learn English or to favor English as the language of instruction in public schools.

* Mexican migrants are much less likely to seek citizenship than other immigrants.

What it means is that the immigrants coming from Mexico come to America for different things. They tend not to embrace America with the fervor of other immigrant groups in the past. Why? Because unlike those other groups, they still feel very closely tied to their home country. And the attitudes expressed in the PublicAgenda.org poll show that the core principles of the GOP (patriotism and nationalism) do not resonate with these immigrants.

So, what does all this mean? It means that if Republicans want to compete for voters in the next generation, they will have to alter significantly their messages and beliefs. I'm not at all convinced that can happen, but I'm sure there are those who consider it possible.

Kids Prefer Food in McDonald's Wrappers

U.S. researchers have determined that "preschoolers preferred the taste of burgers and fries when they came in McDonald's wrappers over the same food in plain wrapping."

(Dr. Thomas) Robinson (of the Stanford University School of Medicine) and colleagues conducted a taste test with a total of 63 kids aged 3 to 5 who were enrolled in a Head Start preschool for low-income families.

They were offered five pairs of foods and asked if they tasted the same or to point to the one that tasted better.

The food -- taken from the same order -- was wrapped in either McDonald's packaging or unbranded packages in the same color and style.

In about 60 percent of the tastings, the kids preferred food in the McDonald's wrapper.

"They actually thought the food tasted better," Robinson said in a telephone interview.

According to the study, kids even thought carrots in the McDonald's wrappers tasted better.

Maybe I need to keep the McDonald's wrappers and put the meatloaf and broccoli in them.

The Silliness of Banning Words

New York City gained notoriety when its city council banned the N-word about four months ago.

Now, in its zeal to over regulate, the liberals on the NYC city council are contemplating banning the B-word: bitch.

The problem is that unlike the word "nigger," which is universally condemned, there were those actually defending the use of the word "bitch."

And Ms. Mealy admitted that the city’s political ruling class can be guilty of its use. As she circulated her proposal, she said, "even council members are saying that they use it to their wives..."

While the bill also bans the slang word "ho," the b-word appears to have acquired more shades of meaning among various groups, ranging from a term of camaraderie to, in a gerund form, an expression of emphatic approval. Ms. Mealy acknowledged that the measure was unenforceable, but she argued that it would carry symbolic power against the pejorative uses of the word. Even so, a number of New Yorkers said they were taken aback by the idea of prohibiting a term that they not only use, but do so with relish and affection.

"Half my conversation would be gone," said Michael Musto, the Village Voice columnist, whom a reporter encountered on his bicycle on Sunday night on the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Christopher Street. Mr. Musto, widely known for his coverage of celebrity gossip, dismissed the idea as absurd.

I would argue that, at least in the rap industry, the N-word was used the same way. Wasn't the argument that by embracing the word, it lost its power as a pejorative?

The problem with all these silly symbolic laws is that they are unenforceable and, by banning them, it can actually encourage usage because the words become even more offensive.

The English language is quite durable and can handle its misuse, even when such misuse is designed to hurt or threaten others. If words truly "will never hurt me," then we need to get past the nonsensical idea of banning things that are offensive to various groups.

I wrote a post back in March about the parents who sued a school district for disciplining their daughter for saying, "That's so gay." I supported the school reprimanding the daughter, because I think one of the purposes of school is to teach children the way they should behave. Aphrael disagreed, saying that the phrase was just part of teenage vernacular.

While I agree with the school over disciplining the girl, I would never support a law that banned the usage of this phrase. Why? Because the Constitution allows us to express ourselves, even when that speech is offensive (although there are limits).

I don't like the idea of giving words so much power that they need to be regulated. And in the case of the N-word, society has changed enough that, in my lifetime, that word has a level of offensiveness that's higher than even the F-word. It seems to me that society has done the best job ostracizing that word and that we don't need legislation.