Does anyone else have the sense that part of Hillary's ferocity is due to her wanting at the least, should she not be able to take the nomination, to be in a position to force Obama (if he wants to heal the party and win the general) to put her on the ticket?

Would Hillary want to be Obama's VP choice? (Well, she'd want to be his choice, but would she accept it?) I can't imagine her wanting to play second fiddle to him, and think that if it came to it, she'd rather McCain win than Obama, so she could run again in 2012.

Does anyone else have the sense that part of Hillary's ferocity is due to her wanting at the least, should she not be able to take the nomination, to be in a position to force Obama (if he wants to heal the party and win the general) to put her on the ticket?

No, I don't think so. I am not a mindreader, like Nieporent is with Trent Lott, but FWIW (not much--pure mindreading and speculation, but what the hell) I think she thinks she can win, and I also think she really can't stop herself--the Clintons are political-compulsives.

Also, while I think there is likely some disconnect between how most public figures think the general public sees them and how the general public really sees them, I suspect that the disconnect is very large with HC. I have a good buddy who an independent and likes Obama although he disagrees with many of Obama's economic policies. He says he would go for Obama but will go McCain if HC is the Demo nom, and he asked me what I thought was up with HC. I told him that I think she sses herself as being a winner, as being at least 50% responsible for her husband's electoral success, and as the only candidate who can beat McCain. So, I think her idea is that if she stays in long enough, she will get it done, somehow, both against Obama and McCain. "Mystique and Aura" so to speak.

I am also convinced she stayed in in large part becuase she knew Wright would surface, but I don't think it has hurt Obama as bad as she wanted it to. Some say it'll kill Obama if he makes the general. I am agnostic on that one. We'll see.

she could run again in 2012.

I can't see the scenario where Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic nomination in 2008 and manages to win it in 2012. At that point, the choices will be (a) a 65-year-old Senator who couldn't win the party's nomination 4 years earlier, (b) a 51-year-old Senator who was his party's nominee four years earlier, or (c) somebody new. I can't see how (c) and (b) aren't obviously better choices than (a). This is Hillary's chance, right now, and I think that's precisely why she's fighting so hard and showing no signs of being willing to concede. And if she recognizes this, she might follow LBJ's lead and accept the VP slot if it's offered as her last chance at the White House.

I'm kind of impartial here, since I've almost always worked for myself and have never had to worry about getting fired, but don't some people actually function better when they're not always facing the Sword of Damocles hanging over them? Is a feeling of job insecurity always conducive to better performance? Isn't it entirely possible that always having to worry about your job is just as likely to distract you than it is to spur you? In some types of jobs, at least, isn't constant pressure and oversight often likely to steer employees towards short term results as opposed to a long-term strategy? Was the revolving door managerial style of the Yankees in the 80's and early 90's more conducive to success than having Joe Torre around for 12 years in a row?

Well, first, as for the Yankees, setting aside cause-and-effect -- I'm betting some of the managers of the 80s would have stuck around longer if they had won WS in 4 of their first five seasons -- nobody is arguing that irrational behavior by management leads to better performance from employees. The Yankees were not a case of short term vs. long term incentives, the Yankees were a case of random hirings and firings having little to do with anything other than whim.

Second, I'm sure you realize that what you describe is kind of a caricature of the private sector; most of us aren't sitting around nibbling on our fingernails saying, "Hope I don't get fired today." If you're doing a good job, and your firm is doing well, you expect to keep your job. But you know that if you screw up something significant, you should worry. And you know that if your firm isn't doing well, you should go above and beyond rather than putting in the same effort you always do.

Working for yourself you didn't have to worry about getting fired, but you did have to worry about the existence of your business. That doesn't mean you woke up every morning of your life saying, "God I hope we don't go bankrupt today," did it? But you did think about what you needed to do to stay in business and worked to improve your business, right? How would you have handled it if you were told that your business's continued existence was guaranteed no matter what sort of effort you put in, as long as you didn't commit a felony or get drunk and skip work for a month? It's human nature, even for self-directed people, to slack off when there's no pressure at all and no reward for extra effort.

think that if it came to it, she'd rather McCain win than Obama, so she could run again in 2012.

Some Demos think so, too.

Second, I'm sure you realize that what you describe is kind of a caricature of the private sector; most of us aren't sitting around nibbling on our fingernails saying, "Hope I don't get fired today.

Fair point. But again, that goes the other way. Trust me: most teachers aren't sitting around saying, "Well, I can kick back today because my awesome union has the public by the balls."

Public schools need to operate in a space between JC's wife's law firm and traditional university tenure, leaning towards the latter.

It's human nature, even for self-directed people, to slack off when there's no pressure at all and no reward for extra effort

But I don't think it's sentimentalist to say that pride in student accomplishments, value for intellectual and academic achievements, and commitment to culture are part of the "reward" for teachers who stay sharp. They fall into the category of "cultural capital" rather than dollars and cents, but that's a very real incentive all the same.

If you're doing a good job, and your firm is doing well, you expect to keep your job. But you know that if you screw up something significant, you should worry. And you know that if your firm isn't doing well, you should go above and beyond rather than putting in the same effort you always do.

And, as you of course know, with law firms there is a cold, hard measure of quantity of performance: the number of hours the lawyer bills. (Not the number of hours the lawyer works, mind you, but the number of hours he bills; it's often the case that the lawyer works more than he can bill, depending on the type of law he is practicing and the type of clients he is handling.) Billable hours provide hard data in terms of quantity, efficiency, and collectibles.

Quality is a bit harder to get a handle on, but the partners the associate works for quickly get a very good idea. An associate typically doesn't last very long at a law firm with poor quantity or quality of performance.

Public schools need to operate in a space between JC's wife's law firm and traditional university tenure, leaning towards the latter.

Maybe, maybe not, rr. Again, I'd like to see the rationale for the leaning. I wasn't moved by Bob's stability argument, as there seem to be many ways of achieving that end w/o endorsing tenure.

He's linked to Bush in a much more vital way: he wants to perpetuate Bush's war in Iraq, which is the most pressing issue of the day*. Sure, Bush isn't running, but the "Bush Doctrine" is still very much in play. He'll have to answer for marching in lockstep with Bush on Iraq and, more recently, tax cuts and torture.

The war is something McCain will have to deal with, of course. But McCain doesn't have to "answer for marching in lockstep with Bush on Iraq." (McCain has criticized Bush's handling of Iraq for a long time.) He only has to answer for supporting the war. If Obama/Hillary bring up Bush's lies, McCain can just shrug and say, "So what? That wasn't me, and none of that is relevant to what we should do now."

In many cases, true enough. At the same time, though, I think in many cases people "scorn" the rich when the rich are seen to be complaining--not just for being rich.

They would have a right to complain. They pay most of the taxes, only to have people talk about them contemptuously as if they're getting away with something while arguing that their taxes should be even higher.

And (to answer your other question about 200K being a yardstick) someone making 200K is in no way "rich"; but that's what people pretend when they say they want to raise taxes on "the rich" -- and then define that as someone making 200K.

When the emails have mentioned McCain, they simply say McCain is a hero and a patriot--who wants to continue Bush's policies on the war and on the economy, and those are losing policies from the standpoint of Obama.

I still think it's a different calculus for McCain, since he's being judged on what he would do now with the war, not what he would have done then.

They would have a right to complain. They pay most of the taxes...

I don't know why this is a point in their favor. The very rich own most of the wealth, so it figures that they'd pay most of the taxes.

200K is "rich" in one way

Richer than me!

I can't see the scenario where Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic nomination in 2008 and manages to win it in 2012. At that point, the choices will be (a) a 65-year-old Senator who couldn't win the party's nomination 4 years earlier, (b) a 51-year-old Senator who was his party's nominee four years earlier, or (c) somebody new. I can't see how (c) and (b) aren't obviously better choices than (a).

There's some merit to that, of course. However, the Republican nomination this year is a 71-year-old Senator who couldn't win the party's nomination eight years earlier. (I guess he's not officially the nominee yet, but let's just jump the gun here.) He ran against a whole slew of new guys - at least in the sense that they were new to the presidential scene. Party dynamics may change between the two parties a bit, but I think that it's a little odd to say what you just did in light of the present situation.

For what it's worth, I couldn't see how several of those other guys weren't obviously better choices than McCain, but nobody asked me.

They would have a right to complain. They pay most of the taxes...

I don't know why this is a point in their favor. The very rich own most of the wealth, so it figures that they'd pay most of the taxes.

Is there a good reason why you snipped the part of my answer which argues why the "rich" have a right to complain? It's not just that they pay most of the taxes. It's that -- here, I'll re-post it for you -- "They pay most of the taxes, only to have people talk about them contemptuously as if they're getting away with something while arguing that their taxes should be even higher."

However, the Republican nomination this year is a 71-year-old Senator who couldn't win the party's nomination eight years earlier... He ran against a whole slew of new guys - at least in the sense that they were new to the presidential scene.

He's also running as a new guy himself — the McCain that ran for the nomination in 1999 is a totally different guy that one one that's running in 2008.

I wasn't moved by Bob's stability argument, as there seem to be many ways of achieving that end w/o endorsing tenure

.

Such as? Not a gotcha--a question

Short answer: I am not wedded to the tenure system, and I think it should be changed in some ways. But, essentially, you have a situation where evaluation of performance, objectively and fairly, is very problematic, and a job where accumulation of profit, billable hours, whatever, is not the end goal. Customer and product overlap. Additionally, unless you want to be a principal, you don't "advance" or "get promoted" other than maybe to go to a school with easier students or to a high school. It is, as my pal Beano says, public service. As such, it is very hard to set up a fair merit pay system, so the trade off is job security. Without that, few people would want to teach. If the pay were higher, more people would, but determining who should get paid more, except sometimes at the very extreme ends of the curve, is hard, because there are so many human variables. (The charter in NY, where they are going to start teachers at 125K, will be interesting to watch).

In addition, teachers are in general not respected in this country, which is very different from most of the rest of the world, a fact which some teachers gloss over but which bothers others.

That is the short answer, but it is not a complete one, If have time, I will say more and propose changes.

They would have a right to complain. They pay most of the taxes, only to have people talk about them contemptuously as if they're getting away with something while arguing that their taxes should be even higher.

This is a worldview issue in part, and there is no point in pursuing it further. If you believe that the country as a whole is better off if people who make 200K a year pay less in taxes than they do now, that is an economic policy discussion that has little/nothing to do with whether people who make 200K a year take too much ####. A lot of different kinds of people--lawyers, teachers, cops, Catholics, gays, evangelical Christians, atheists--take too much ####. On an emotional level, I don't resent people who have a lot of money. I would have chosen a diffent career if I wanted to try to have a lot of money, and I am doing just fine as it is, although I have to work nights to make that happen. I do resent it when people who make a lot of money put down people who don't.

For what it's worth, I couldn't see how several of those other guys weren't obviously better choices than McCain, but nobody asked me.

You're a Repub, right? Who was your candidate?

If you believe that the country as a whole is better off if people who make 200K a year pay less in taxes than they do now, that is an economic policy discussion that has nothing to do with whether people who make 200K a year take too much ####

I believe the country would be better off if everyone paid less in taxes -- and if we slashed spending, since too much of it is unnecessary.

But still, it's not hard to understand why people would complain when others take their money and then whine that they're not getting enough of it. (Although I don't really see wealthy people "complaining"; most of the whining is being done by the people doing the taking, not the giving.)

I believe journalists mostly try to be nonpartisan, and to the extent that the issue is Democratic vs. Republican, they mostly succeed. They try to criticize both sides evenly -- indeed, some would claim that they overcompensate and bend over backwards to criticize Democrats more.

Where their bias shows through is where they discuss issues rather than candidates. And then they don't try to be fair, or if they do, they're very bad at it.

Well...

It's the "issues" that I was referring to. The terms I used were not Democrat and Republican but rather "left" and "right." Which are of course far broader than the two major political parties. It's quite incontrovertible that the far-right get a much harder time of it than the far-left (not that I have any time myself for either group). I do think journalists try and be fair on the issues - it's just that some issues would never occur to them for class reasons, and some issues go contrary to the structure of professional journalism.

The narrative of every story has to be "This is a big huge problem! Something must be done about it!" This is necessary to sell the story to the public. "This issue is not a big problem!" will never sell. "This issue is a problem but there's nothing that can be done about it, so who cares!" will never sell. So a politician who says "Well, it's not very nice that there is a liquidity crisis, but there's very little the government can do about it without causing worse problems" is working directly contrary to the journalist's narrative, and so that answer will never be considered acceptable. Similarly for a politician who says "Well, it's not very nice that there's an evil dictator in a third world country, but there's very little the government can do about it without causing worse problems*." Given that by and large the right favours the government doing fewer things than the left, it naturally follows that the media will have a structural bias - particularly on economics.

There is also the class issue, but I'm not sure I want to get into that because I think it would open up a whole other can of worms.

*This, by the way, is why I think the media coverage prior to the Iraq war was so slanted - not because of some evil Republican powers to control the media, but because the anti-war protestors didn't have a satisfactory (for the media narrative) response to "So what are you going to do about Saddam Hussein?" This is also why the Bush administration gets such a free pass on its civil liberties violations.

I believe the country would be better off if everyone paid less in taxes and we slashed spending, since too much of it is unnecessary.

OK, fair enough.

But still, it's not hard to understand why people would complain when others take their money and then whine that they're not getting enough of it. (Although I don't really see wealthy people "complaining"; most of the whining is being done by the people doing the taking, not the giving.)

Again, worldview, not policy, so a no-go. That said, it is a worldview that is no less biased than those you are condemning, IMO, as the word "whining" indicates.

Along the lines of what I was saying in #1731, if experience really does make a better teacher, and more stable teams of teachers make for better schools, then there is a quality-based argument for tenure.

But those statements are true of any profession. Experience makes one better at any job, and more stability usually makes for a better company.

Without tenure, schools under financial pressure will edge out experienced workers and go with less-experienced new workers who will teach for less, as happens in all kinds of other industries.

But that doesn't happen in all kinds of other industries, because (as you note) experience makes one better at one's job, and thereby worth more money.

There are three reasons why this would be a problem wrt teaching, one directly caused by unions and two less so. The two not directly caused by unions (although they play a role):

1) It's hard to measure teacher performance. This isn't as big a difference between teachers and others that one might think; performance isn't that easy to measure quantitatively in many fields. There's no sabermetrics for lawyers, doctors, librarians, or auto mechanics. Where unions contribute to the problem is that they (a) resist subjective evaluations of their performance, and (b) resist objective evaluations of their performance.

2) Good performance by teachers isn't actually worth more for schools. A business with better performing employees makes more money; a school with better performing teachers doesn't. Again, unions contribute to the problem by resisting competition/school choice/homeschooling; if schools actually had to compete for customers, then the ones with the best teachers would be worth more. (This happens to a limited extent even now, but because a public school has a geographic monopoly, the competition is normally limited to attracting parents who are moving into the area rather than ones already there.)

The one directly caused by unions:

3) Teachers, like most unionized employees, want pay to be based on seniority rather than performance. My firm can pay the good secretaries more and the mediocre ones less. It can pay the good lawyers more and the mediocre ones less. But teachers insist that all of them with the same amount of time should make the same money. If you're forced to pay bad teachers the same as good ones, of course you're motivated to replace expensive old ones with cheaper young ones.

Otherwise, there's no reason why your comments ought to be any more true for schools than for other businesses.

At the same time, a teaching career requires a commitment to job skills which just don't transfer outside of schools: there's no place for a fourth-grade teacher to work except in another elementary school. Without tenure, there would be massive turnover in public-school faculties. Now, I can't make an absolute link between stability and quality, but say you're fixing to buy a house in one of two neighboring elementary districts. One features a school with teachers who have been there for 10, 15, 20 years, who have perhaps come there from other elementary schools in the district and worked together to make it a stable environment for kids. The other district has a school where the turnover is massive and the most senior teachers have been there 3-4 years at best; it loses faculty all the time to burnout and transfers out. Where do you buy your house?

Which school has the best results? One of the big problems with the way (typically) liberals want to measure schools is that they want to -- as you did -- talk all about inputs rather than outputs. I don't care who the teachers are, what class sizes are, per capita spending, etc.; I want to know how the school does.

Besides, your point (since I assume your point is that the stable school is more desirable for the home buyer) undermines your argument, as I note above. People do desire the better schools, and will spend more to get them. Which means that stability is valuable to the school, and thus the school should strive for it regardless of tenure.

They would have a right to complain. They pay most of the taxes...

I don't know why this is a point in their favor. The very rich own most of the wealth, so it figures that they'd pay most of the taxes.

What interests me particularly in regard to this issue is, how wealth is derived from the commonwealth. My preference, then, is for a tax system that to some degree has a user-fee aspect built in. Most of the poor folks I know don't use the airport much, if at all, and so don't derive much benefit from airports, whereas the small-business guy I know who's doing well and depends on the system of largely taxpayer-funded, small airports around the country, does. I can make a similar point with regard to, say, Walmart, which is almost completely dependent on the taxpayer-financed Federal highway system. Calculating the true costs and benefits of these things, and how to decide who pays what for them, is of particular interest to me.

I think even universitys should move to a less generous tenure system (though BTF posts would drop).

As for HRC accepting a VP offer - that would make her the first female VP if elected. It ain't what she wanted, but it puts her in the history books nonetheless. And on track to become president down the road, potentially without winning an election first.

This isn't as big a difference between teachers and others that one might think; performance isn't that easy to measure quantitatively in many fields.

Yeah, there is. You are making an assumption based on a very weak knowledge base. As this shows:

I don't care who the teachers are, what class sizes are, per capita spending, etc.; I want to know how the school does.

3) Teachers, like most unionized employees, want pay to be based on seniority rather than performance. My firm can pay the good secretaries more and the mediocre ones less. It can pay the good lawyers more and the mediocre ones less. But teachers insist that all of them with the same amount of time should make the same money

.

This is a legitimate point. It is hard to address, but it is legitimate. It is part of why traditional labor-union goals cause so much anger when applied to teachers.

(The charter in NY, where they are going to start teachers at 125K, will be interesting to watch).

I fell of my chair. Link, please!

Here you go, ark:

Link

Does anyone else have the sense that part of Hillary's ferocity is due to her wanting at the least, should she not be able to take the nomination, to be in a position to force Obama (if he wants to heal the party and win the general) to put her on the ticket?

No. I don't see why Hillary would even want to be the vice president, barring a conspiracy theory in which she arranges for Obama's death the way she did Vince Foster's and Ron Brown's. :) She's more powerful and influential where she is than she would be as Obama's vice president; if she can't be president, she'd probably want to remain in the Senate. I think her ferocity is due to the facts that
(a) she really really really (ad nauseam) wants to be president;
(b) she thinks she has a very good shot at getting elected president if she gets the nomination; and
(c) she (McCain notwithstanding) would be too old to run in 2016.

It's one thing to drop out if you have zero chance, a la Edwards, or if you have a decent chance down the road, as (e.g.) Obama might if he lost this time around. But when you're so close in your one-and-only chance, you don't give up easily.

EDIT: And let me add, if she were losing because her views were rejected, then she might not find it so intolerable. If you want to raise taxes/invade Iraq/nationalize the health care industry/etc. and you lose to a guy who wants to cut taxes/stay out of Iraq/support free markets/etc., well, you lost for a good reason. But when you're losing to someone who holds almost identical views to yours, you think you're really close to winning.

Thank you, robin.

You're a Repub, right? Who was your candidate?

I describe myself as a libertarian (small 'l'); my stances and voting tendencies cross between the Republican and Libertarian parties. But if you limit the options to 'R' and 'D', and force me to pick, then 'R' it is. From what I can tell, Nieporent is a reasonable comparison; hopefully he won't be too offended by that assertion.

Enough about me, though. The candidate I liked best was Fred Thompson.

There's some merit to that, of course. However, the Republican nomination this year is a 71-year-old Senator who couldn't win the party's nomination eight years earlier. (I guess he's not officially the nominee yet, but let's just jump the gun here.) He ran against a whole slew of new guys - at least in the sense that they were new to the presidential scene. Party dynamics may change between the two parties a bit, but I think that it's a little odd to say what you just did in light of the present situation.

For what it's worth, I couldn't see how several of those other guys weren't obviously better choices than McCain, but nobody asked me.

The difference, though, is that Bush won the general election. From the Republican perspective, McCain is the best candidate from the 2000 election who's eligible to run for President this year. McCain didn't have to beat Bush again to win the 2008 nomination. If Obama beats Clinton in 2008, he's still going to be out there, eligible to run for President, in 2012.

On top of that, what really hurts Clinton, I think, is that she was an overwhelming favorite in this election and she blew it. I don't see how that translates into somebody that the Dems are going to want to run out there four years from now.

Good points. That's fair. Nobody likes to vote for a loser (Ralph Nader supporters excepted), so it is pretty important for a candidate to not be seen as such. Hillary will still run in 2012 if Obama wins the Democrat nomination and subsequently loses to McCain in the general election. Whether she can win or not, we'll see. You think not; I hope you're right.

if schools actually had to compete for customers, then the ones with the best teachers would be worth more [...] stability is valuable to the school, and thus the school should strive for it regardless of tenure

Well, I said my argument might have some holes. But your comments here, DMN, point to one aspect of it that I think holds up a little bit. JC asked why tenure is a good idea specifically in public schools. For private schools, which really do compete with one another by trying to hire better teachers and cultivating an aura of ivy-stabilized continuity, the motives you discuss here are valid. Public schools, however, are a basic community service. We want them to be good and we want them to be non-competitive, because there are so very many people who have zero options in terms of where to school their kids. How are such public schools going to keep good teachers, given that municipalities are always going to be trying to cut taxes and carve away their budgets? Tenure does serve that function.

Now, I can accept that you might want to do away with public schooling altogether. That would be a consistent viewpoint. The various privatization initiatives in recent years (charters, vouchers) tend that way, and they incorporate that ethos of keen competition. They also leave people without choices holding the short end of a ragged stick, as so often. I dunno. Maybe schools should be more like car dealerships and less like running water, mail delivery, or trash pickup. Or maybe those basic services should be privatized as well. I sense a lot of this debate boils down to whether one thinks community cooperation is a good thing, and you and I are certainly poles apart on that philosophy, which is fine.

As for HRC accepting a VP offer - that would make her the first female VP if elected. It ain't what she wanted, but it puts her in the history books nonetheless. And on track to become president down the road, potentially without winning an election first.

If Obama were to make the Clintons his VP (which will never happen) and actually got elected, he'd definitely need about triple the normal Secret Service detail, and a full time food taster.

The narrative of every story has to be "This is a big huge problem! Something must be done about it!" This is necessary to sell the story to the public. "This issue is not a big problem!" will never sell. "This issue is a problem but there's nothing that can be done about it, so who cares!" will never sell. So a politician who says "Well, it's not very nice that there is a liquidity crisis, but there's very little the government can do about it without causing worse problems" is working directly contrary to the journalist's narrative, and so that answer will never be considered acceptable. Similarly for a politician who says "Well, it's not very nice that there's an evil dictator in a third world country, but there's very little the government can do about it without causing worse problems*." Given that by and large the right favours the government doing fewer things than the left, it naturally follows that the media will have a structural bias - particularly on economics.

I appreciate the response. To the extent you're describing how journalists think, I agree with you 100%. But it's not clear to me that this "has to" be the narrative for business reasons; while I agree that "X is a problem but we should let it solve itself" is hard for politicians to sell, I'm not sure that it's true of the press.

But even if it is, journalists still have to decide whether something is a problem to be reported at all. First, they could report good news rather than bad news. Second, they choose which bad news they want to report.

For instance, when's the last time they reported negatively on the growth of the government budget rather than, e.g., the growth of the government budget deficit? Never, because they don't think the former represents a problem. How often do they report on overregulation as a problem rather than underregulation? (They may report on a specific example of a stupid, wasteful regulation, but when do they ever report on overregulation as a systemic problem?) Of course, these are my beliefs, and not everyone shares them; I'm not saying that the media ought to be libertarian (except to the extent I think everyone should be). The issue here is bias; they do choose one side on these issues.

For instance, they could read the recent blitz from a bunch of activists about the alleged "gender pay gap" and shrug and say that it's nothing to report -- but they choose to call it a problem and report on it. Or they could shrug and say that "not that many blacks in MLB" is not newsworthy -- but they choose to deem it a problem and report on it. Whether these choices are good or bad, the point is that they're choices, not neutrally-determined stories based on objective principles.

I can make a similar point with regard to, say, Walmart, which is almost completely dependent on the taxpayer-financed Federal highway system.

The "taxpayers" in the "Taxpayer-financed Federal highway system" are drivers; the money comes from the gas tax. The federal highways are about as good an example of a user's fee as you'll find.

I describe myself as a libertarian (small 'l'); my stances and voting tendencies cross between the Republican and Libertarian parties. But if you limit the options to 'R' and 'D', and force me to pick, then 'R' it is. From what I can tell, Nieporent is a reasonable comparison; hopefully he won't be too offended by that assertion.

Enough about me, though. The candidate I liked best was Fred Thompson.

Flournoy: not including Ron Paul, who (a) had no chance to win anyway, and (b) as a Rockwellian, was not really the sort of libertarian I like, Fred Thompson was my favorite candidate among those running this year. So, no, I'm not offended.

(Most of the small-l libertarians I know were -- again, once you got past the initial excitement over a quasi-capital-L Libertarian running for office -- Thompson supporters.)


And since we're talking about libertarians, in response to BDMG:

Maybe schools should be more like car dealerships and less like running water, mail delivery, or trash pickup. Or maybe those basic services should be privatized as well.

Indeed. When I read your previous sentence, my immediate reaction was, "Well, running water, mail delivery, and trash pickup should be more like car dealerships and less like running water, mail delivery, and trash pickup."

I sense a lot of this debate boils down to whether one thinks community cooperation is a good thing, and you and I are certainly poles apart on that philosophy, which is fine.

Nowwaitaminute. Libertarians have absolutely no problem with "community cooperation." Of course it's a good thing. As long as it's voluntary. Government is not "cooperation"; it's force. (Now, you may reject that as well, but you should at least be clear on where I/we stand.)

For instance, they could read the recent blitz from a bunch of activists about the alleged "gender pay gap" and shrug and say that it's nothing to report

A good example. I have read exactly one study that concluded there was "nothing to report," and it was far and away more convincing than any study to the contrary that I've ever seen. (Most of these studies to the contrary are more vent outlets than studies, of course.)

I'm afraid I can't provide any links (it was in print, and this was a few years ago), but the upshot was that once you control for maternity, there is no statistical difference between male and female salaries. Females over the age of 40 earned the same as their male counterparts. The difference in salary was entirely borne by women "likely to have children" - married women in their twenties.

Possibly you could find this a problem, but I don't. I can't fault a company for committing less to an employee who is likely to spend months on end away from the job. In any case, it's not an example of sexism, just proper risk assessment.

On top of that, what really hurts Clinton, I think, is that she was an overwhelming favorite in this election and she blew it.

I wouldn't say she "blew it," so much as Obama just caught fire.

Note that the press had anointed him "the rising star of the party" immediately following the keynote address he gave at the Democratic National Convention.

Besides, Hillary just didn't realize that being black provides an advantage in presidential elections :-)

For instance, when's the last time they reported negatively on the growth of the government budget rather than, e.g., the growth of the government budget deficit? Never, because they don't think the former represents a problem.

Uh, "never"? There has been tons of negative coverage in the mainstream media throughout the G.W. Bush years about the runaway growth in the size of government, in particular when the Republicans controlled all three branches, because it belied the conservative principles Bush and the Republican congressional leaders mouthed. Bald contradictions make for good (and easy to produce) copy. Indeed, it was often traditional fiscal conservatives in the party who were saying the most negative things about it, which itself generated coverage, because internecine squabbles make for even better copy. Just ask Obama and Clinton.

DMN - you make some good points. But there's another structural point about journalism.

Research costs money. Investigative journalism costs money. And journalism doesn't have a lot of money. Newspapers are merging and folding. TV news is mostly supported for reputational reasons (in fact the same is true for many newspapers). There is much less investigation and fact-gathering than there used to be. Regional American newspapers no longer have overseas reporters. Newspapers are to a large (and growing) extent reliant on other people doing their work for them. They print the stories they are given.

Who gives the newspapers stories? Well, to an extent, businesses and unions and consumer activists and special interest groups and political parties. And to some extent you'd expect this all to balance out. But one of the largest sources of stories is government departments. And the story the government department is always trying to press is "We are doing a good job... but we need more money!" And the government-pushed stories are good for the journalist because the government can provide masses of statistics and data.

And to the extent that reporters can do investigation of the government, they are highly dependant on the cooperation of government officials, who again will cooperate more with reporters who want to tell the "right" story, and will feed the journalist the data provided.

I'm not saying journalistic bias isn't a factor - I just think the structural factors are much larger.

Libertarians have absolutely no problem with "community cooperation." Of course it's a good thing. As long as it's voluntary. Government is not "cooperation"; it's force. (Now, you may reject that as well, but you should at least be clear on where I/we stand.)

Oh, I have no problem agreeing to disagree there. I'm all for Boy Scouts and the Lions Club, but building a reservoir or a sewer system is quite a different kind of cooperation, and entails universal, indeed "forced" cooperation. (I know that reservoirs and sewers don't get built by high disinterestedness, but often by graft and logrolling; it's just that I don't see how they can rely on private-enterprise competition at all.) And I would go well beyond reservoirs and sewers to say that health care and education should be shared universally, too.

This is a highly abstract distinction, but indeed I don't want to misrepresent either your sense of community or my own.

Indeed, it was often traditional fiscal conservatives in the party who were saying the most negative things about it, which itself generated coverage, because internecine squabbles make for even better copy.

Yes, the Bruce Bartletts and such have been criticizing the Bush administration heavily for its drunken sailor spending. (Bartlett, contrary to the implication in your post earlier, was not criticizing tax cuts; he was criticizing the way taxes were cut.) But reporting on "internecine squabbles" among conservatives about the size of government is not the same thing as reporting negatively on the size of the government itself. There have not been "tons of negative coverage in the mainstream media throughout the G.W. Bush years about the runaway growth in the size of government."

The mainstream media's complaint, parroting Democratic politicians, is that the growth hasn't been runaway enough. They've complained that NCLB isn't expensive enough, not that we're spending too much on it. They've complained that the prescription drug benefit isn't generous enough. The only area where the media has argued that the budget is too high is Iraq. (The media won't even truthfully report that all spending is "discretionary," allowing politicians to pretend that they don't have any say over some spending.)

Yes, the Bruce Bartletts and such have been criticizing the Bush administration heavily for its drunken sailor spending. (Bartlett, contrary to the implication in your post earlier, was not criticizing tax cuts; he was criticizing the way taxes were cut.)

I linked to the Bartlett op-ed and quoted the headline in the link. How the #### is that implying something different than what he wrote?

The mainstream media's complaint, parroting Democratic politicians, is that the growth hasn't been runaway enough. They've complained that NCLB isn't expensive enough, not that we're spending too much on it. They've complained that the prescription drug benefit isn't generous enough. The only area where the media has argued that the budget is too high is Iraq. (The media won't even truthfully report that all spending is "discretionary," allowing politicians to pretend that they don't have any say over some spending.)

I guess if you have your ideological blinders on you're only going to see what you want to see, but there have been hundreds upon hundreds of stories, prominently displayed in the mainstream media, that show how ridiculous your caricature is. It would take weeks to link to all of them, but here are just a few. It doesn't take much effort with a Google search to find stuff like this:

Three years ago, President Bush went to war against congressional pork. His official 2003 budget even featured a color photo of a wind-powered ice sled -- an example of the pet projects and alleged boondoggles he said he would no longer tolerate.

Yesterday, Bush effectively signed a cease-fire -- critics called it more like a surrender -- in his war on pork. He signed into law a $286 billion transportation measure that contains a record 6,371 pet projects inserted by members of Congress from both parties.

Road Bill Reflects the Power of Pork

And just look at this Post editorial a couple days later, following up on this front page story:

Mr. Bush, who had threatened to veto wasteful spending bills, chose instead to cave in. He did so despite the fact that in addition to a record number of earmarks the transportation bill came with a price tag that he had once called unacceptable. The bill has a declared cost of $286 billion over five years plus a concealed cost of a further $9 billion; Mr. Bush had earlier drawn a line in the sand at $256 billion, then drawn another line at $284 billion. Asked to explain the president's capitulation, a White House spokesman pleaded that at least this law would be less costly than the 2003 Medicare reform. This is a classic case of defining deviancy down.

Big Government Conservatives

Or just look at the NY Times earlier this year, on Federal job growth:

IT is not exactly a distinction that he had in mind, but seven years into his presidency, George W. Bush is in line to be the first president since World War II to preside over an economy in which federal government employment rose more rapidly than employment in the private sector.

Job growth where Bush didn't want it

US News, just a couple weeks ago:

The Return of Big Government

The free-market policies of the past 25 years were preceded by a huge decline in American trust in government. But there's little sign that a decade of corporate blunders and scandals—from Enron to Citigroup—or even political fiascoes like Katrina has created a renewed enthusiasm for government.

Criticizing pork is not the same as criticizing the size of government, Chip. Earmarks do not represent additional spending. An earmark is when a member of Congress takes money already appropriated and directs where it will go, instead of leaving it up to the various executive department bureaucrats and agencies. (Do they tend to be even more wasteful than 'normal' spending? Yes -- but that's on the benefit side of the cost-benefit analysis, not the cost side.) The "bridge to nowhere" wasn't new money; it was money already appropriated for transportation, diverted to an island in Alaska that no rational person would have spent money on if Don Young and Ted Stevens weren't so influential. Instead, it would have gone to an overpass in Connecticut, or a wider road in Virginia. But it wouldn't have been returned to the taxpayers.

I believe the country would be better off if everyone paid less in taxes -- and if we slashed spending, since too much of it is unnecessary.

What a fantastic idea, Ray!

Hey, we all like to play mock baseball GM - how much harder could being president and congress.

2007 budget, 2.8 Trillion
2007 revenues 2.4 Trillion. 1.1 trillion of that is fed. income tax.

so the first 400 bill in tax cuts doesn't really very far, just nulls out the yearly deficit.

Here's the small fry in the budget:
# $89.9 billion (+1.3%) - Education and training
# $76.9 billion (+8.1%) - Transportation
# $72.6 billion (+5.8%) - Veterans' benefits
# $43.5 billion (+9.2%) - Administration of justice
# $33.1 billion (+5.7%) - Natural resources and environment
# $32.5 billion (+15.4%) - Foreign affairs
# $27.0 billion (+3.7%) - Agriculture
# $26.8 billion (+28.7%) - Community and regional development
# $25.0 billion (+4.0%) - Science and technology
# $23.5 billion (+0.8%) - Energy
# $20.1 billion (+11.4%) - General government


about $471 billion.
Rest of the budget:

# $586.1 billion (+7.0%) - Social Security
# $294.0 billion (+2.0%) - Unemployment and welfare

Most of this is covered by payroll taxes, $870 billion on the revenue. So you could cut both. That would kind of screw old people and poor people. But it would make the budget smaller!


# $394.5 billion (+12.4%) - Medicare
# $276.4 billion (+2.9%) - Medicaid and other health related

So, is this just wasted money? Pork to be cut? Could we get the same services for $300 billion instead of $600?


# $548.8 billion (+9.0%) - Defense[2]

Hmm... I can only assume this counts Dept. of Homeland Security. It doesn't count Emergency or discretionary funding bills, which adds about 120 billion. I figure by maintaining a substantial nuclear arsenal - we can keep the country safe from foreign invaders. Probably that would put alot of people out of work... but then their taxes would be zero!

How much should we cut?

# $243.7 billion (+13.4%) - Interest on debt
I can only assume (not being a financial wiz) that defaulting would be "bad", so I think we are stuck with that.

If you are thinking long term - are we going to squirrel away $100 billion a year to pay off the principle on the debt?

Here's the small fry in the budget:
# $89.9 billion (+1.3%) - Education and training
# $76.9 billion (+8.1%) - Transportation
# $72.6 billion (+5.8%) - Veterans' benefits
# $43.5 billion (+9.2%) - Administration of justice
# $33.1 billion (+5.7%) - Natural resources and environment
# $32.5 billion (+15.4%) - Foreign affairs
# $27.0 billion (+3.7%) - Agriculture
# $26.8 billion (+28.7%) - Community and regional development
# $25.0 billion (+4.0%) - Science and technology
# $23.5 billion (+0.8%) - Energy
# $20.1 billion (+11.4%) - General government

For starters, I'd say we can cut out:

Education and Training (90 billion);
Natural Resources and Environment (33 billion);
Agriculture (27 billion);
Science and Technology (25 billion); and
Energy (24 billion); and
General Government (20 billion).

There. I've saved us 219 billion right there.

Of course, it's not practical to shut off the cash flow for all of these all at once; I'm talking generally about federal monies that taxpayers don't need to be paying.

I'm going to humbly suggest we can get a matching $219bn saving from the annual defence budget without putting the country in danger of invasion.

More, I'm going to suggest that doing so would help, not hinder, employment levels.

Jeez, Ray, you're like a Jackson-era Democrat opposing the Whig Party. "Nay, I say NAY to all internal improvements!" :)

And nay it should be.

Education and Training (90 billion);

Good point. We hardly need more Abstinence and say NO to drugs programs.

Natural Resources and Environment (33 billion);

Ah, the EPA - I think the commercial sector has shown the ability to police itself. Does this include Forestry? Or is that...

Agriculture (27 billion);

You must be a vegetarian, although I have to admit - $27 big ones is probably too much to spend on meat inspection.

Science and Technology (25 billion); and
Energy (24 billion);

But who keep us abrest of Metric standards! I guess all those scientists can go work in Canada and the EU.

General Government (20 billion).

Kind of hard to not cut those one...

Criticizing pork is not the same as criticizing the size of government, Chip. Earmarks do not represent additional spending. An earmark is when a member of Congress takes money already appropriated and directs where it will go, instead of leaving it up to the various executive department bureaucrats and agencies.

Thanks for the civics lesson, which I didn't need. The point of including that article as an example wasn't to cite the fact that it was a pork bill, or claim that controlling the size of government was about eliminating pork; it was to point out (as the article pointed out) that there has been coverage of the fact Bush couldn't even hold his own line on the overall size of that particular pork bill, despite the fact that it was members of his own party writing it. To quote the article, "He did so [signed the bill] despite the fact that in addition to a record number of earmarks the transportation bill came with a price tag that he had once called unacceptable."

If Bush wants a bill costing no more than $256B, and Congress wants to earmark the whole amount, well, fine they can fight over whether the money's being distributed efficiently or not. But when Bush can't even hold it at that cost, and then can't hold it at the next "line in the sand" he draws, and then the bill ends up costing more than $286B (plus $9B in hidden costs)—a full 15% larger than the original cost he said was appropriate—he's not exactly working very hard to shrink the size of government. And the media in this case didn't cover it in any way that suggested it should have cost even more.

Sorry for the interruption, but I found this funny:

Two high school seniors in Scranton, Pa., are paying a high price for their interest in politics.

Colin Saltry and Joey Daniel say they skipped gym class on Monday to rush over to a diner where Sen. Barack Obama's motorcade had just pulled in for an impromptu breakfast stop.

The two met Obama, and they say he even signed excuse slips for them to show their teachers. That didn't work. Saltry and Daniel got one-day suspensions for leaving school grounds, and Saltry has been ordered to resign as senior class president.

Two high school seniors in Scranton, Pa., are paying a high price for their interest in politics...

This is in the running for worst misuse of HS authority ever.

Education and Training (90 billion);

Good point. We hardly need more Abstinence and say NO to drugs programs.

States can do public schools, and private schools work fine also.

Agriculture (27 billion);

You must be a vegetarian, although I have to admit - $27 big ones is probably too much to spend on meat inspection.

Meat doesn't need to have quality control standards placed on it by the federal government. A company providing spoiled beef to its buyers doesn't stay in business long; it's a self-correcting problem.

A company providing spoiled beef to its buyers doesn't stay in business long; it's a self-correcting problem.

Yup. It's positively Darwinian, in that it kills off those dumb enough to eat the bad stuff! I also think the EPA is unnecessary. Look at Hooker Chemical and Love Canal, for example. Hooker was folded into Occidental Petroleum, which had to pay 129 mil to the survivors of Love Canal, the ones lucky enough to get through the cancer to take care of the babies who survived the 56% birth defect rate from 1973-1978. Sure taught Hooker a thing or two about corporate responsibility!

I hope I made it clear I believe corporate accountability need only be arrived at after the fact, by dealing with the survivors. After all, so that companies can better estimate costs and therefore profits, it's important to put a dollar value on human life. That way if I'm, say, a big car company, and I discover a flaw in the gas tank of a car I'm selling, and if it'll cost me $100 per car to fix the flaw in one million cars, versus an average $1.1 mil settlement for each of an estimated 70 fiery deaths, are you kidding? I'm voting inferno every time!

... watched fight club recently ?

... watched fight club recently ?

Why do you ask, NN?

Two high school seniors in Scranton, Pa., are paying a high price for their interest in politics.

Colin Saltry and Joey Daniel say they skipped gym class on Monday to rush over to a diner where Sen. Barack Obama's motorcade had just pulled in for an impromptu breakfast stop.

The two met Obama, and they say he even signed excuse slips for them to show their teachers. That didn't work. Saltry and Daniel got one-day suspensions for leaving school grounds, and Saltry has been ordered to resign as senior class president.

OTOH if the two students were so inclined, those notes would probably do pretty well on ebay. That's gotta be worth a one-day suspension and the loss of a stupid senior class presidency---what sort of budget comes with THAT office?

That way if I'm, say, a big car company, and I discover a flaw in the gas tank of a car I'm selling, and if it'll cost me $100 per car to fix the flaw in one million cars, versus an average $1.1 mil settlement for each of an estimated 70 fiery deaths, are you kidding? I'm voting inferno every time!

Then, as I said above, you won't be in business very long. What you're missing from your little equation is that people usually don't like buying cars from a company that sells its cars with exploding gas tanks.

Why do you ask, NN?

because determining that recall/settlement calculation is Edward Norton's character's job at the beginning of that movie. He describes it almost exactly as you did.

Yup. It's positively Darwinian, in that it kills off those dumb enough to eat the bad stuff! I also think the EPA is unnecessary. Look at Hooker Chemical and Love Canal, for example. Hooker was folded into Occidental Petroleum, which had to pay 129 mil to the survivors of Love Canal, the ones lucky enough to get through the cancer to take care of the babies who survived the 56% birth defect rate from 1973-1978. Sure taught Hooker a thing or two about corporate responsibility!

First, statements about the "survivors of love canal" is loony, since nobody was hurt by Love Canal; there was no statistically significant increase in birth defects or any other illnesses.

Second, Hooker was completely corporately responsible; not only did it disclose all the facts to the Board of Education, but it specifically warned them not to build there. The district didn't care; it was so eager to have the property that it threatened to seize it via eminent domain if Hooker didn't give it to them.

Third, Hooker wasn't the only one using the land to store waste; the Army and the town of Niagara Falls itself were also using the land for the same purpose; there's no way to separate out who might have been responsible for any particular dumping.

You've really got to stop getting your facts from such right wing publications as the Nation or Mother Jones or perhaps the plot of Erin Brocovich. I know conservatives -- such as yourself -- find it tough to focus on science instead of their ideological agenda, but you might want to try it.

I hope I made it clear I believe corporate accountability need only be arrived at after the fact, by dealing with the survivors. After all, so that companies can better estimate costs and therefore profits, it's important to put a dollar value on human life. That way if I'm, say, a big car company, and I discover a flaw in the gas tank of a car I'm selling, and if it'll cost me $100 per car to fix the flaw in one million cars, versus an average $1.1 mil settlement for each of an estimated 70 fiery deaths, are you kidding? I'm voting inferno every time!

Of course, the sneering simply demonstrates economic (and logical) illiteracy. Cost benefit analysis is not only not wrong; it's impossible not to do. One must "put a dollar value on human life." A manufacturer can always spend more money and make cars safer -- except at some point, they get too expensive to buy. Where to balance out the added costs vs. benefits can be questioned, but not whether to do so. (The other question is who should decide on the proper balance -- the owner of the car, who's taking the risk, or the government.)

There some personal crap here, but I'll send it to the bottom so we can address the real questions: (if you love meta, please skip down)

I've already addressed the tenure question with a treatise about ten pages back which was indeed long and rambling, but has some good points you can take or leave. But let me reiterate:
1. There are a number of major problems in Education. The biggest facing the largest groups of students are
a) Lack of any consistent caregivers in many students' lives
b) Lack of quality instruction

There's more, but those two are huge. A lot of the discussed issues fit into these two categories (achievement problems, class size, dead weight tenured teachers, cultural issues, etc.)

2. The first problem trumps the second one. I constantly harass people to come visit my school or any similar school is so they can see how apparent this is. 90%+ of instructors at my school complain about massive discipline issues that prevent them from undertaking any of those awesome education school teaching strategies. Most won't say this publically because they are worried to be labeled as "deficient in classroom management" which is a fast way to get cut. Most of them retreat into direct instruction methods enforced by fear--which gets them through the day but accomplishes little in the way of student learning. Obviously, if we are looking at 90%+, it's more likely this is a systemic issue. Let's address it.

3. Creating consistent support at home is something that must be addressed, but any real progress will take an extremely long time and likely comes back to educating current students well.

4. So let's focus on consistent support at school. For this we need:
a) Teachers who actually support the students
b) Those teachers to have maximum contact with students will as close to zero turnover within the school year and minimal turnover from year-to-year.

5. Here's where accountability and job security come in. The turnover in schools has been dismissed in this thread as the same as turnover in other fields.

However, that's really intellectually lazy. At this level of turnover, there's no way to attract enough quality instructors to provide consistency to the students.

Any attempt to increase accountability has to be accompanied with countermeasures to not only balance the greater turnover but to reduce it to a reasonable level.

I'm not using this as a way to avoid accountability--I love accountability, if I had a button to fire all the dangerously inadequate teachers (including myself if necessary) I would do it immediately, provided of course that I had some way of ensuring that students would have good instructors to teach them.

I believe that tenure is a necessary piece of this puzzle. I would like it to be tied to a certain high level of performance, and be tied to the site that the teacher earns it at with waivers for extraordinary teachers in extraordinary circumstances. This would tie teachers to the community they teach in and provide students consistency.

However, administrators must receive support to implement reasonable evaluation systems.

Because I am so high profile and not at all scared of being fired, I have the principal in my room weekly. But that's extremely rare.

The norm is that most teachers have not had a single principal visit this year.

How is tenure the problem with that equation? It's not that there's no system for accountability, and it's not that it's inadequate. We don't know! We often don't even use the system we have except to settle personal grudges.

In terms of recruiting higher quality teachers, pay should be increased (I could care less, but it would attract more people) with heavy incentive to those who work extended day in meaningful ways.

I would double pay teachers for unused sick days as the kids need their teacher there everyday.

I'm not writing too well right now, so if you have specific questions, please ask away. Let's not nitpick.
_____________________________________

I feel a little caught between a rock and a hard place. You have people complaining about teachers who care about themselves more than their students. Then I get told that if I wear my care for my students on my sleeve that I'm "self righteous".

I was late responding to JC's questions because I just finished about a day and a half straight of teaching. (Skip if you don't want to hear about my day, otherwise, please don't whine.) I picked up supplies at 6 am, taught three courses, then took 25 kids to the International Hostel. Then was up until 1:15am teaching and supervising--the kids cooked and presented to the travelers and then I was responsible for all 11 of the male students (no downtime at all). I put on some Japanese Psytrance in one ear so I could sleep through the snorers but still hear any problems. We woke up at 6:30, did more morning lessons and reflection at the Hostel, got picked up by the bus at noon, went back to the school, picked up my car from one of the parents' house, back to the school, worked until three, and drove to my evening meeting about our recent NOLA trip, found out it was canceled. When I got home, I got a bomb threat through the school email. I called around and figured out what was best to do.

I'm about to head to bed so I can be start the day at 6:30 tomorrow for ACT testing. It was worth it--the kids did great and the Hostelling staff was amazing--they had a great set-up for the kids and helped us document the experience.

"everyone ought to spend some time with people who spend almost every waking hour working with and on behalf of inner-city school children."

Again, not with the children or with their families. Rather, X thinks you need to spend time with HIM in order to IMPROVE yourself.

Rich, you quote me saying "working with children" and then you say that I am "again" saying, "not with children".

I'm either self-righteous or righteous and probably both, but your hatred needs to ease off so we can hear each other at all. I don't imagine there's anyone here who would question my dedication to working with and behalf of children, and if you really wanted to know, I'd be happy to elaborate more. I like to brag about the amazing things my kids have accomplished and taught me.

because determining that recall/settlement calculation is Edward Norton's character's job at the beginning of that movie. He describes it almost exactly as you did.

Ah--no, I had no idea of it from fight club--I was using my understanding of how Ford handled their Pinto "problem".

Then, as I said above, you won't be in business very long. What you're missing from your little equation is that people usually don't like buying cars from a company that sells its cars with exploding gas tanks.

That minor business enterprise, the Ford Motor Company, says "hey there!"

PETA and the Bogus $1 Million Meat Prize

Just because were so close to 2000 posts.

Then, as I said above, you won't be in business very long. What you're missing from your little equation is that people usually don't like buying cars from a company that sells its cars with exploding gas tanks.

The whole point of the FDA and the EPA is to look at things that hit the market BEFORE companies start racking up a body count. It's all well and good that dangerous companies go out of business soon, but wouldn't it be a wee better if they didn't come to market at all?

The whole point of the FDA and the EPA is to look at things that hit the market BEFORE companies start racking up a body count. It's all well and good that dangerous companies go out of business soon, but wouldn't it be a wee better if they didn't come to market at all?

You know, this may come as a shock to you, but it's not in companies' best interests either to "start racking up a body count."

You know, this may come as a shock to you, but it's not in companies' best interests either to "start racking up a body count."

Hey, there's a pretty long and glorious history of companies not discussing the negatives of their body-count-racking products with the general public and selling their product anyways. It's the whole reason why departments like the FDA came about.

You know, this may come as a shock to you, but it's not in companies' best interests either to "start racking up a body count."

Sure, but since when do companies always act in their best long-term self-interests, especially if short-term self-interests differ but are also appealing? I'm sure others will be much better able than I am to name examples, but I'm pretty sure examples are out there. (I'm not sure I can name them, though some names do come to mind -- if no one else takes this particular baton from me, perhaps I'll risk displaying my ignorance on the subject).

You know, this may come as a shock to you, but it's not in companies' best interests either to "start racking up a body count."

Statements like this basically invalidate almost every other argument you've tried to use to convince people. If you have that little value for human life, you're basically just working with a completely different value system than most of the rest of us.

Everyone knows the drug company isn't going to "start racking up a body count." But they will take enough risks that there is more of a body count than there should be. I mean, we have an FDA and we still had the whole Vioxx disaster where the company was essentially falsifying results. If you consider statisticians to be the lawyers of data interpretation (which I do), the people who worked on those papers would be disbarred.

Cost benefit analysis is not only not wrong; it's impossible not to do. One must "put a dollar value on human life." A manufacturer can always spend more money and make cars safer -- except at some point, they get too expensive to buy. Where to balance out the added costs vs. benefits can be questioned, but not whether to do so. (The other question is who should decide on the proper balance -- the owner of the car, who's taking the risk, or the government.)

This whole line of reasoning might be a lot more appealing if manufacturers actually informed the public about the results of all that cost-benefit analysis, rather than keeping it to themselves as some sort of privileged information.

To take only the most egregious example: The tobacco companies knew in advance about the addictive properties of the chemicals they added to their product. They knew full well the human cost of this added addictiion. They kept that knowledge to themselves. As a result, more people died.

Assuming that the tobacco companies weren't out to kill people deliberately, they nevertheless went full steam ahead with their poisonous additives, which had the result of killing more people.

This was "cost-benefit analysis," all right. But the "cost" was to the public, and the "benefit" was to the tobacco companies. And by the time the public learned about this "cost-benefit analysis," it was only after untold added addiction and premature deaths.

That lovely rhetoric you spout here so often about "free choice" and "let the consumer, not the government decide" is all so much complete bullshlt when it comes to cases such as this. If you actually believed in the concept of consumer choice, as opposed to the rhetoric, you'd acknowledge that real consumer choice is based on full information, not just advertising slogans that provide plenty of subliminal suggestions but not the sort of information that actually might enable consumers to make a fully informed "choice".

And then when Congress holds hearings and rakes the tobacco company executives over the coals for suppressing those "cost-benefit analysis" studies, you start babbling your "free market" cliches, as if a few pithy quotes from the libertarian playbook can settle each and every question of social policy. Sometimes reading your posts on the subject is like listening to some tired old lefty quoting Marxist theory in support of collectivizing food production, or ideologues on both sides quoting passages in the Bible as some sort of basis for our mideastern policy.

The bottom line is if more companies treated consumers as adults capable of making informed choices based on full pertinent information (such as the correlation between chemical additives and addiction), rather than as children to be manipulated by suggestive images, there wouldn't be nearly as many of us demanding more oversight and regulation. Give the consumer honest information without having to have the government pry it out of you, and you might be less likely to find "big government" stepping into the picture.

The truth is that millions of people like myself are far from "big government" ideologues, and when corporations repeatedly misuse and suppress information about their products, it's not some abstract love of "big government" that leads us to favor increased governmental oversight and regulation. It's a desire for simple honesty and openness. If more corporations were meeting that demand on their own, the appeal of "big government" would diminish considerably.

And if "small government" lovers had any practical solution to this, other than "leave the corporations alone," you might find yourselves less on the defensive. You might begin by telling your buddies in those executive suites to let us read some of those cost-benefit analysis studies, and let us weigh the proper balance between "costs" and "benefits."

You might begin by telling your buddies in those executive suites to let us read some of those cost-benefit analysis studies, and let us weigh the proper balance between "costs" and "benefits."

At the very least, if you convicted every one of these people who allowed one of these bad drugs to go forward of conspiracy to commit first degree or second degree homicide, then maybe we wouldn't need such regulation. The ease with which the government treats white collar criminals compared to other criminals is the biggest argument against any sort of de-regulation of things like food and drugs. I mean, if you do a cost-benefit analysis, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the higher ups in the Enron mess should get the death penalty.

Statements like this basically invalidate almost every other argument you've tried to use to convince people. If you have that little value for human life, you're basically just working with a completely different value system than most of the rest of us.

Nice try.

Anyway, assuming you're actually interested in having a discussion instead of just attacking me: even without federal regulation, we would still have civil and criminal liability in place -- products liability, fraud, etc. I don't claim that corporations always act rationally. But it's not like they would be unchecked without federal regulation (even putting aside the check provided by the market).

Everyone knows the drug company isn't going to "start racking up a body count." But they will take enough risks that there is more of a body count than there should be. I mean, we have an FDA and we still had the whole Vioxx disaster where the company was essentially falsifying results.

Bingo. These things happen (Enron, etc.) despite regulation. Regulation is not a cure-all, and I don't see why a 100% guarantee of good behavior is demanded with lack of regulation when such doesn't even happen with regulation.

Everyone knows the drug company isn't going to "start racking up a body count." But they will take enough risks that there is more of a body count than there should be. I mean, we have an FDA and we still had the whole Vioxx disaster where the company was essentially falsifying results. If you consider statisticians to be the lawyers of data interpretation (which I do), the people who worked on those papers would be disbarred.

Oh please. There was nothing wrong with Vioxx, and no data was "falsified." That's why the FDA's advisory panel, as well as the Canadian equivalent, recommended keeping Vioxx on the market; why similar COX-2 inhibitors are still on the market; and why the trial lawyers settled their lawsuits against Merck for what was essentially nuisance value. It wasn't because they like leaving money on the table; it's because their case that data was "falsified" is nonexistent. (Are you referring to the VIGOR study, where the NEJM made spurious accusations against Merck without even giving Merck a chance to respond?)

The whole point of the FDA and the EPA is to look at things that hit the market BEFORE companies start racking up a body count. It's all well and good that dangerous companies go out of business soon, but wouldn't it be a wee better if they didn't come to market at all?

The problem is that supporters of FDA-type regulation always look at only one side of the equation: bad products introduced to the market. But there's another side. If you know a way to have the FDA or other regulatory agencies keep dangerous products off the market without also keeping beneficial products off the market, let me know.

The problem is that the FDA presents an example of Bastiat's classic "things not seen." Everyone sees the people (allegedly) injured by Vioxx and can point a finger at Merck or the FDA for not stopping it; it's a lot harder to point a finger at a drug company or the FDA over someone injured because a drug wasn't developed or introduced or marketed. But far more people suffered and/or died of heart attacks because the FDA prevented drug companies from telling people that aspirin can protect them from heart attacks than suffered heart attacks because of Vioxx.

And because of that, all of the FDA's incentives revolve around erring on the side of keeping drugs off the market. If a bad drug is introduced and people die, Congress may call people on the carpet and scream at them about how incompetent they are. If a good drug is delayed or blocked and people die, that doesn't happen. There's nobody to even complain. (You did have AIDS activists campaigning for faster approval of AIDS medicines in the 80s/90s, but there was no Congressional screaming at the FDA examiner(s) who delayed these drugs. And that was only because AIDS already happened to be a political issue; for something like heart attacks, there's nobody to complain.)

The problem is that supporters of FDA-type regulation always look at only one side of the equation: bad products introduced to the market. But there's another side. If you know a way to have the FDA or other regulatory agencies keep dangerous products off the market without also keeping beneficial products off the market, let me know.

The problem is that the FDA presents an example of Bastiat's classic "things not seen." Everyone sees the people (allegedly) injured by Vioxx and can point a finger at Merck or the FDA for not stopping it; it's a lot harder to point a finger at a drug company or the FDA over someone injured because a drug wasn't developed or introduced or marketed. But far more people suffered and/or died of heart attacks because the FDA prevented drug companies from telling people that aspirin can protect them from heart attacks than suffered heart attacks because of Vioxx.

And because of that, all of the FDA's incentives revolve around erring on the side of keeping drugs off the market. If a bad drug is introduced and people die, Congress may call people on the carpet and scream at them about how incompetent they are. If a good drug is delayed or blocked and people die, that doesn't happen. There's nobody to even complain. (You did have AIDS activists campaigning for faster approval of AIDS medicines in the 80s/90s, but there was no Congressional screaming at the FDA examiner(s) who delayed these drugs. And that was only because AIDS already happened to be a political issue; for something like heart attacks, there's nobody to complain.)

This is a serious point, and one that we can't sidestep. But how is it inconsistent with the one about full disclosure?

Good example: Those ubiquitous ads for overactive bladder medicines, Viagra, depression medicines, etc., may cause a lot of eye-rolling and raise plenty of questions about the relative budget allocations between product development and marketing, but at least anyone who doesn't press the mute button when those ads appear can hear a long list of side effects, which are voiced in a normal tone rather than speeded up. And although I'm one of the eye-rollers, I can't see much of an argument for "consumer deception" here. If people want to risk those side effects in order to relieve the symptoms that these medecines promise to relieve, that should be entirely up to them.

But if we later discover that those side effects---especially that "may cause premature death" one, were known to be statistically far greater than these advertisements imply, then that's another story.

Please note that I am NOT saying that that the current wave of ads are covering up any such studies. Not every corporation has the total indifference to the murderous nature of their products found at the highest levels of the tobacco companies.

But the point remains: Fully inform us, and then let us choose. Don't keep potentially damaging information to yourselves, and then start howling when the government regulators step in.

Two minor points:

1) E-X, I think your passion and dedication to improving the lives of kids is honorable and admirable. However, blanket statements about the intelligence and purity of heart of your fellow teachers (and yourself) are grating and do not lend themselves to rational discourse. There is a middle ground here: your actions (and those of your co-workers) speak for themselves and carry a great deal of weight, but there is no need to make statements that effectively declare teachers that you work with to be saints.

2) Ray, it's clearly not in the corporation's interest to kill people, but it very well may be in an individual's interest to maximize short-term profit and leave the long-term liability to someone else. If I'm running a drug company with no FDA, what's to keep me from pumping up the stock price by announcing a miracle cancer drug that I know has a 5% mortality rate, cashing out before the deaths/lawsuits hit, and heading off to some other country? Obviously, this isn't a movie and my assets will be non-liquid and possibly frozen by the government, but it can take a long time for the accountability you suggest we rely on to actually kick in. During that interval, I can live like a king, cash out as much as I can, and go into hiding in the Carribean. Or, in the case of tobacco companies, I can make a ton of money and die before the decades-long process of death, discovery, lawsuits, and accountability ever affects me. There are plenty of individuals who would (and have) take that course of action at the cost of many, many lives. I sympathize with libertarian ideals to a certain extent, but there really are some things that need to be regulated.

I believe that tenure is a necessary piece of this puzzle. I would like it to be tied to a certain high level of performance, and be tied to the site that the teacher earns it at with waivers for extraordinary teachers in extraordinary circumstances. This would tie teachers to the community they teach in and provide students consistency.

Like I said, I wanted you to weigh in first. Basically, I think tenure should be harder to get, and tied to a variety of factors, but not eliminated. Evaluating how teachers are doing is tricky, but not impossible. People just need to realize that it is not the same as evaluation in other fields and needs to be based on more than "test scores." Another approach would be to tie tenure--ane pay--to people willing to teach in challenging schools. That would get contunity in the palces where it's needed, alleviating, a little, the issues at home that so many kids have.What happens often here in CA is that people use it to get to teach "nice kids" leaving the newbies to hard cases.

I also think that older teachers who have tenure and may not have the energy anymore should be utilized in other ways--as mentors, tutors, running small groups of at-risk kids/management problem kids to help the newbies get their feet wet. The older tenured types that raise the
ire of the commentators can be better contributors if their roles are adjusted.

My credential program focused heavily on classroom management, and I am 6'0/195 with a deep voice so it was not a problem for me (a sense of hunor helps, too). Three people were asked to leave my credential program when they could not control students in student teaching situations. It is a huge issue.

heavy incentive to those who work extended day in meaningful ways

Indeed: three areas--curriculum development tutoing/small group and parental/community outreach

I got a bomb threat through the school email

That explains why Rich hasn't been posting the last 18 hours.

Nice post, E-X.

BTW, my principal buddy spends all his time with the teachers in trouble and leaves the best people alone.

The problem is that supporters of FDA-type regulation always look at only one side of the equation: bad products introduced to the market. But there's another side. If you know a way to have the FDA or other regulatory agencies keep dangerous products off the market without also keeping beneficial products off the market, let me know.

The problem is that the FDA presents an example of Bastiat's classic "things not seen." Everyone sees the people (allegedly) injured by Vioxx and can point a finger at Merck or the FDA for not stopping it; it's a lot harder to point a finger at a drug company or the FDA over someone injured because a drug wasn't developed or introduced or marketed. But far more people suffered and/or died of heart attacks because the FDA prevented drug companies from telling people that aspirin can protect them from heart attacks than suffered heart attacks because of Vioxx.

And because of that, all of the FDA's incentives revolve around erring on the side of keeping drugs off the market. If a bad drug is introduced and people die, Congress may call people on the carpet and scream at them about how incompetent they are. If a good drug is delayed or blocked and people die, that doesn't happen. There's nobody to even complain. (You did have AIDS activists campaigning for faster approval of AIDS medicines in the 80s/90s, but there was no Congressional screaming at the FDA examiner(s) who delayed these drugs. And that was only because AIDS already happened to be a political issue; for something like heart attacks, there's nobody to complain.)

I don't know what you are going to do about that. Drug-market-readiness is a lot trickier than you apparently think.

There is a middle ground here: your actions (and those of your co-workers) speak for themselves and carry a great deal of weight, but there is no need to make statements that effectively declare teachers that you work with to be saints.

Sure. But it is an understandable reaction to the kinds of stuff people say about teachers all the time. Your post is quite reasonable, but check some of the posts on the other side if you want to go meta.

But the point remains: Fully inform us, and then let us choose. Don't keep potentially damaging information to yourselves, and then start howling when the government regulators step in.

You can't be "fully informed". Just like we can't on law changes. It's more complicated than that. Can *some* people handle it? Sure - but is it worth the effort? there's considerable diminishing returns.

If I'm running a drug company with no FDA, what's to keep me from pumping up the stock price by announcing a miracle cancer drug that I know has a 5% mortality rate, cashing out before the deaths/lawsuits hit, and heading off to some other country?

There's lots of information missing here (Does the drug actually work even given the 5% risk? What specifically did you do?), but, assuming you've engaged in acts which have exposed you to criminal or civil liability, the legal system can deal with you (particularly the criminal system, which moves faster than the civil system). There are also practical issues at play: are people going to buy your miracle drug on your say-so, or would you have to demonstrate results first? And how many people in your company would have to be willing to lie in order to put out falsified results? I know people have this odd notion that corporate CEOs are like James Bond villains who just snap their fingers and have an army of people willing to lie and commit murder for them, but it's just not the case.