Category Archives: Current Events

Colorado High School Education

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An article in the Denver Post by Peter Huidekoper, Jr. explains that recent higher graduation rates aren’t being accompanied by improved educations. There are “…several high schools where the four-year graduation rate is impressive but the (low) ACT scores and (high) remediation rates are not.” Apparently the ACT test given in the 11th grade is the one remaining “…assessment that matters.” The article discusses examining the ACT scores for 2012 juniors, 2013 senior graduation rates, and remediation rates for those who entered a Colorado college the next fall.

The data studied by Huidekoper showed a clear correlation between ACT test scores and graduation and remediation rates. “For students with ACT scores 21 and above nearly 90 percent graduate and remediation rates are exceptionally low. Graduation rates decrease and remediation rates increase as ACT scores drop. Westminster High (in my home city) had an ACT average score of 16.3, a surprisingly high graduation rate of 76.9%, and “…most of those graduates who went on to college required remedial classes.”

The author gives many more examples of generally depressing data. The “…staggering statewide remediation rate of 34.2 percent does not include nearly half of the 2013 graduates who did not go on to college.” It is clear that there an appallingly small number of seniors who receive a high school diploma and are “college ready.” The author asks whether “…a diploma from a Colorado high school truly stands for something.”

 

Third Wave of Racism in America?

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New Jim CrowSlavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration – are these the evolution of racism in America?

The New Jim Crow is written by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer and associate professor at Stanford Law School. She says that over ten years of working for the ACLU she has come to believe that liberal and civil rights groups are failing to recognize an important issue – mass incarceration – and failing to recognize that it is a racial issue.

Part of the problem is that no one wants to be seen as favoring criminals. As Alexander notes, there were several blacks who personally fought segregation on buses, but if they resisted arrest or had unsavory relatives, they didn’t make a good test-case for civil rights leaders. Rosa Parks became that test case because, not only did she refuse to give up her seat, she was unimpeachable.

Alexander defines mass-incarceration as time in prison, plus notes that “ex-offenders are discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives… in voting, employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service.” This creates a permanent underclass and, since black and brown men are incarcerated at much higher rates than whites for the same crimes, this is a racial underclass.

She failed to realize this herself for many years, so “knowing as I do the difficulty of seeing what most everyone insists does not exist, I anticipate this book will be met with skepticism… may seem like a gross exaggeration… this book argues that mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow.” Continue reading →

The Raisin Debate in the Supreme Court

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Why did the Supreme Court get involved in a dispute about raisins? George Will explained in an editorial that the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act passed in 1937 was one of the New Dealer responses to the Great Depression. The law required farmers to turn over a significant portion of their crops to the government, which would theoretically drive up prices. Something called the “Raisin Administrative Committee” was formed by regulation in 1949, and that committee accused Marvin and Laura Horne of refusing to turn over a million pounds of raisins. The government wanted the Hornes to pay $700,000 for their failure to comply.  Justice Elena Kagan wondered during the arguments whether this case involves “a taking or it’s just the world’s most outdated law.” Will’s answer is: both. “The law has spawned more than 25 ‘marketing orders’ covering almonds, apricots, avocados, cherries, cranberries, dates, grapes, hazelnuts, kiwifruit, onions, pears, pistachios, plums, spearmint oil, walnuts and other stuff.”

The New York Times reports that the Supreme Court ruled that actions by the raisin committee “…amounted to an unconstitutional taking of private property by the government.” The Hornes successfully defended themselves arguing that the program violated “…the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which says private property may not be taken for public use without just compensation.” Eight justices agreed and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan joined Sotomayor in dissenting that the “Hornes should be relieved of the obligation to pay the fine and associated civil penalties.” Breyer wrote that he would have returned the case to lower courts. In his concurrence with the majority Justice Thomas, perhaps showing that even Supreme Court Justices can use puns, “…said such a move would be a fruitless exercise.”

I enjoyed Will’s closing sentences. “Progressives say, ‘Government is simply the name we give to the things we chose to do together. That is not how the Hornes are experiencing government.”

If Your Job Were a Video Game, Would You Play It?

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Our recent Great Recession drew attention to declining participation in the workforce – that is, a growing percentage of our population is unemployed by chance or by choice. The trend started before the last days of Bush 43’s administration – consider the regional depression that accompanies the demise of Youngstown steel mills since the late 1970s. Continuing automation – robots and software, from hospital operating rooms to fast food outlets – is replacing workers. The self-driving car, a true auto-mobile, “could soon threaten driving, the most common job occupation among American men.”

So says Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. (Enter World Without Work in your favorite search engine – the article inspires quite a few responses.) America’s most valuable company in 1964 was AT&T employing over 700,000 workers. Today’s communications giant of similar value is Google, employing 55,000.If the trend continues, the world will look very different at the end of the 21st century than it does today, but “the signs so far are murky.”

Why do people work?

  • For money, of course. Thompson points to the 19th century as a possible model of a time with few wage-jobs, but I have trouble envisioning a nation of subsistence farmers arising. Even if it did, some cash is needed (I think it was in the 19th century, too.) People need food, housing, and also a share of their society’s norms, and money buys those things.
  • For “a routine, an absorbing distraction, a daily purpose… Many people are happier complaining about jobs than they are luxuriating in too much leisure.” Most jobs aren’t fulfilling – Thompson asks, if your job was a video game, would you play it? But unemployed people – including retirees – watch TV rather than pursue their dreams. Even crummy jobs provide structure within a community, and human beings are social animals.

Continue reading →

Another Unintended Consequence of Obamacare

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The commentary posted last week was about the financial burden being placed on States by Obamacare. The article titled “Electronic care: Why doctors quit,” by Charles Krauthammer describes an even more important unintended consequence. Doctors who have small practices, often the doctors in rural communities, don’t have the financial resources or technology support to comply with the law. They are retiring because the law requires so much of their time is used for regulatory compliance rather than providing health care. According to the article, the law has created “…a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to ‘provider’.”

The article says virtually every doctor expresses bitterness about the electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces “…nothing more than ‘billing and legal documents’—and degraded medicine.” One doctor observed that “…introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.” Medical practices that hadn’t gone electronic by January 1st have had their Medicare payments cut by one percent. That penalty increases to three to five percent in future years.

What has Obamacare accomplished? Many more people have Medicaid, and that means it takes weeks or months to get an appointment at one of the few places that still accept it. Fifty year old women had their health insurance declared “non-compliant” because they didn’t have maternity coverage. Obamacare has accomplished spending $27 billion on “going paperless,” although the promised $77 billion in savings is nowhere to be found. None of this will make an impression on those who believe government should be in charge of our lives because we and those who have the archaic attitude that they want to own a profitable business can’t be trusted.

Refugee Ethics

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A reader and frequent commenter sent me an article by Richard D. Lamm that appeared in the Denver Post. The story is told of Martin of Tours finding a starving beggar during a 13th Century ride and dividing his cloak and dinner with the desperate man. The question is asked “What if instead of one cold and starving beggar, there are 100?” Considering the world situation, what if there are thousands or millions? There is another report that ISIS has slaughtered another several hundred people after taking a city in Iraq, and thousands or hundreds of thousands of people are being displaced. I have difficulty imagining there is anyone remaining in Syria other than the various fighting organizations or a place for an “ordinary citizen” to live. Thousands of people are taking the perilous trip across the Mediterranean to escape the anarchy and terror of Libya (and perhaps wishing Gaddafi could return). Lamm mentions increasing population “…and political unrest in most of the Middle East and Africa guarantee continued massive migration from that volatile area. Is Europe’s only ethical response to take them all in?”

Lamm mentions that “…the U.S. has its own substantial pressure from south of its boarder (sic).” He then poses the ethical dilemma. “A moral response to an individual or manageable group might not make sense if there are hundreds of thousands. Sheer numbers can totally change the ethical implications.” “The maximum generosity of the developed world cannot absorb the staggering numbers fleeing political chaos, war, violence, and lack of economic opportunity.” Later in the article he writes, “No nation can be expected to commit social and cultural suicide. No ethics can demand what the ecosystem or social fabric of a society cannot support.”

I have fretted since the first reports of ISIS slaughters in Iraq that we as a nation should feel ashamed. Regardless of your beliefs about the justification of the second Iraq War, we did overthrow Saddam Hussein and established a fledgling democracy. We then decided we were “war weary” and withdrew our soldiers. The situation that evolved was predictable. There was an opportunity, perhaps a slim opportunity, to assist in establishing a stable and perhaps even prosperous country where people wouldn’t be slaughtered because they practiced the wrong religion. We instead chose to fulfill a political promise. Is there anyone out there who continues to believe withdrawing was the right thing to do? We also helped “decapitate” the dictatorship in Libya and then sat behind our comfortable borders while terrorists took over.

Perhaps we should be asking whether we’ve learned anything. Are we going to repeat what we did to Iraq in Afghanistan?   I understand the Taliban developed a motto after the announcements that we were going to withdraw on a schedule. “You have the watch and we have the time.”