Foggy Bottom Line

Politics, Economics, and Other Silly Things

Best State for Business – or Bigots?

May 16

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Economic Development, Government, Homosexuality, Morality, Religious Conservatives, Virginia Politics

Early on Tuesday morning, the Virginia General Assembly rejected the nomination of a Navy veteran and Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney for Richmond to a judgeship on the Richmond General District Court.  This Court handles traffic cases and minor criminal or civil cases, and rarely if ever would see a constitutional question.  The 33 Delegates who voted against approving Tracy Thorne-Begland apparently agree with the argument made by the Family Foundation that his record of homosexual activism makes him incapable of ruling impartially and unfit for the judgeship.

To his credit, Governor McDonnell tried to short circuit this bigoted effort, probably because he understands what every economic development official in Virginia knows: firms that employ well-educated, high-salary workers know their difficult to replace employees won’t want to live in a state where the legislature institutionalizes discrimination against their loved ones.  Gays and lesbians hold many of the technology and knowledge jobs that really drive strong economies in the absence of a manufacturing base – there’s a reason why Northrup Grumman moved its corporate headquarters to Virginia rather than Mississippi in 2010.

Virginia became the Best State for Business under former Governor Tim Kaine because his policies created an inclusive environment that emphasized education, talent, expertise, and skill instead of tribal factors that groups like the Family Foundation use to categorize and stigmatize people who don’t fit their understanding of morality. Note that workforce and quality of life make up almost a third of the evaluation criteria – do we really want socially conservative policies that threaten to chase away the young people who have the skills and training we need for a strong economy by attacking the way they live?  Do we want large corporations with diverse workforces to think twice about locating in Virginia?

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Gay Marriage

May 16

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Gay Marriage, Norms, Religious Conservatives

President Obama last week affirmed that he thinks “gays and lesbians should have the right to marry.”  He says nothing about sacrament here, and he is careful to use the word in its verb form expressing more of a secular agreement to pool resources than a religious one to join with God or unite for His purpose.  No talk of defining “marriage” in its institutional sense — just a nod to the secular idea that two individuals should be able to enter into a contractual relationship of a certain type whether or not their genders differ.

This rhetoric emphasizes that at its core the homosexual marriage debate concerns access to a particular legal framework enforced by the State, not which sexual relationships religious institutions must hold sacred.   To be sure, bringing homosexual unions under the umbrella of the State confers a general legitimacy on homosexuality and homosexual acts, and no one can blame evangelicals for attempting to protect their preferred normative framework.

Still, I object to their attempts to use the State to enforce a religious view on how human beings should live.  In the end, they see homosexual behavior as an abomination and affront to God – Tim Wildmon calls homosexuals “immoral, unnatural, and unhealthy” as he asserts widespread anonymous sex among the gay community.  For whatever reason, they feel a need to protect God from this affront, as if their personal relationships with the Almighty depend on helping Him along the Pathway to Victory.   This is the foundation of their objection to marriage equality, not the well-being of children or married heterosexuals.

Ideally, the state would stay out of family matters altogether apart from enforcing whatever contractual relationships people wish to make.  If religious institutions wish to bless one type of union over another, they have that right and the power to do so.  But the State should bless all equally – or none at all.

 

 

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Trespassing on Jefferson’s Capitol

Apr 9

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Democratic Police State, Feminism, Misogyny, Virginia Politics, War on Women

During the recent Virginia General Assembly session, lawmakers considered legislation that would amend and reenact Virginia Code paragraph 18.2-76, an informed consent law, to repeal a clause that would permit doctors to determine gestational age based on information provided by the patient (e.g., “I am two weeks overdue”) and require that doctors perform an ultrasound to determine the gestational age of the fetus in every case, and then offer the woman seeking an abortion an opportunity to view the image.  Whether or not the patient viewed the image would be noted in her medical records.  In the case of women seeking abortions too early in gestation to determine fetal age using transabdominal ultrasound (“jelly on the belly”), this law would mandate that the doctor, at the expense of the patient (in more ways than one), insert a probe to conduct the procedure, whether or not she consented.

This proposal displeased many women, and some rightfully petitioned their government for redress of grievances on the steps of the State Capitol — the one Thomas Jefferson built when Virginia was arguably the most democratic state on the globe.  This protest worked: the legislature changed the proposal to make the more intrusive ultrasound procedure optional.  To be sure, the legislature passed a statute that inserts the State into discussions that rightfully belong in the private realm of medical advice and decision making between a doctor and a patient.  And the patient must still pay for this state-mandated procedure, which insurance may in many cases not cover (small government, anyone?).  But women seeking abortions in Virginia will no longer have to endure state-mandated rape with an ultrasound probe in a state mandated effort — passed largely by middle-aged men — to tell them something they already know: how long they have been pregnant.

But some thirty of the protesters paid a price for this small victory, when they were arrested for sitting on the steps of Mr. Jefferson’s capitol without permission of the Commonwealth, held on buses without water, food, or adequate restroom facilities for hours, and then arraigned in criminal court for unlawful assembly and trespassing.  The assembly charge is clearly a stretch, since Virginia Code requires that the prosecutor prove “commission of an act or acts of unlawful force or violence likely to jeopardize seriously public safety, peace or order, and the assembly actually tends to inspire persons of ordinary courage with well-grounded fear of serious and immediate breaches of public safety, peace or order.”  Since these protesters acted peacefully and never jeopardized public safety, this charge clearly cannot stick.

Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Collette McEachin, wife of Democratic State Senator Don McEachin, today said she would drop the unlawful assembly charges, and offered to drop trespassing charges against any protesters who perform 25 hours of community service.  I’m no attorney, but it’s not clear to me how Virginia citizens can trespass on the grounds of their own state capitol in the course of trying to explain to their elected representatives that they oppose specific proposed legislation.  I walk through these grounds often in the course of my work, and many people lunch there on pleasant days.  Only the context of their presence there — it was in this case overtly political — and if the Commonwealth really can forcefully expel citizens from these grounds solely because their presence there is part of a political protest, then our right to petition for redress of grievances means very little.

Article I, Section 2 of the Virginia Constitution vests all power in the people, and subordinates magistrates as their trustees, who must at all times be “amenable to them.”  Section 12 declares that only despotic governments restrain freedom of speech, and that the General Assembly shall pass no laws abridging the right of the people to peaceably assemble and seek redress of grievances.  Any law that limits the power of citizens to peacefully assemble on the steps of the Capitol to send a message to their legislators appears to be unconstitutional on its face.  Since these protesters assembled peacefully, the Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney should never have brought charges in the first place, and should drop them immediately and unconditionally.

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John Derbyshire is a Racist

Apr 7

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Norms, Racism, Whack Jobs, Wingnuts

I clicked a link on this post at Lawyers, Guns and Money (more Derbyshire comment at LGM here) and found this bat-shit craziness.  Wow.

Derbyshire notes that in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting a few prominent black people discussed conversations many black parents have with their children about discrimination and how others perceive the dress, behavior, and actions of black people, especially young black males.  He then tells readers of his talks with his own kids about how black people are dangerous and stupid, and how they should take care when encountering blacks, especially in groups or positions of power.  Derbyshire then recommends that all white or Asian parents give their kids such a talk: “It might save their lives,” he says, linking to a story about the murder of two white British men who wandered into a housing project in Florida.

He is a racist.

Reading the advice he says he gave his kids makes this clear.  Many blacks are hostile to white people, he says, and some “will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us.”  He therefore recommends avoiding black people and their neighborhoods, to the point of finding out whether concentrations of blacks can be expected there while planning trips to amusement parks or beaches.  Leave if a lot of black people show up suddenly.  And of course, avoid settling in cities or towns managed by blacks.

Seriously?

I have a set of lessons I’ve tried to help young people I have influence over understand, and it’s pretty close to the “talk” my mother gave my brothers and me as we negotiated life in 1960′s Arkansas and Mississippi.  I’ll lay this out as Derbyshire did, and comment only that it’s too bad more people don’t give advice like this:

1. Call the people you meet by their names.

2. People look different because we all have different parents.  This doesn’t matter.

3. Some people base their identity on comparison to others.  Don’t do this.

4. Treat others as you would have them treat you.

5. If you can imagine it, someone somewhere is doing it.

6. You will encounter people from different places, cultures and backgrounds.  They may look odd to you.  Be curious about them.

7. Avoid antisocial people (like John Derbyshire).

8. Some people (like John Derbyshire) don’t like, and discriminate against, others who don’t look like they do.  Avoid these people, too.

9. When you encounter large gatherings of people who don’t look like you, be curious about what they are doing.  They might teach you something.

10. No one is good at everything, but everyone is good at something.  When you can, help people find out what they are good at.

11. Embrace the people you meet who share your values and principles, whatever they look like.

High-minded, perhaps, but at least not dependent on assumptions about the way other people are based on statistical descriptions of group behavior — that is, stereotyping.  We encounter humans as individuals, and to be sure some of them are antisocial and dangerous — like John Derbyshire.  But most care about the same things we do: caring for the people they love and finding some measure of comfort and fulfillment in the world.

John Derbyshire thinks black people are stupid and dangerous, almost by definition, because some individuals do bad things.  I wonder what assumptions he makes about other social groups based on statistics and stereotypes, but the details make no difference.

John Derbyshire is a racist.

 

 

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Augusta National, Women, and Social Norms

Apr 5

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Feminism, Golf

A pretty big golf tournament (Auto-play Video Warning!)  kicked off this morning in Augusta, Georgia, at the course Bobby Jones built.  This is one of the most prestigious major tournaments for professional players at perhaps the single most exclusive private golf club in the world. The club has no membership application process, and the only way to join is by invitation.  Until 1990, Augusta had never invited a black person, and did so then only after the three organizations that govern professional golf said it would no longer permit clubs which discriminate to host tournaments.  This was a pretty big deal, and the bid deal today is that the club still has no female members.

This could change very soon.  This very tradition-oriented club has one that will force a decision on admitting women: it has always offered membership to the incumbent CEO of International Business Machines.  IBM recently promoted a woman, Virginia Rometty, to that position.  Augusta will now have to admit a female member or break this long-standing tradition, exposing the club as worried at least as much about the gender of its members as their positions in the corporate world or place in society.

Sally Jenkins pointed out this in an opinion piece last Friday in the Washington Post.  But then she defended Augusta National as a private club which should be left alone to admit whomever its present membership pleases, and criticized Martha Burk for attempting to shame the club into changing this policy.  Jenkins characterized Burk’s efforts as “blackmailed social engineering” and more offensive than the idea that Augusta might refuse to invite Ms. Rometty to join.  Demanding that the venerable private club admit women, she claims, “saying the same” to the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, college sororities and African American fraternities, whatever that means.  It’s not clear why it makes sense to compare a o private golf club for wealthy men to these kinds of service organizations, and anyone who can donate fifty bucks can be a member of PFLAG.

Jenkins rejects an argument for inclusion of women at Augusta that depends on “some lame idea of sameness for the good of all” and criticizes Ms. Burk for “appointing herself the People’s Deputy for Monitoring the Fruits of the Revolution.”  Martha Burk of course did no such thing — she never said that everyone is the same, nor that everyone should be treated equally by the club.  Nor did she advocate some Communist idea that the People should destroy the Bourgeoise Private Club in the name of some revolution.  After all, Burk did not demand admission of poor people, subsidized by the wealthy members, nor of collective ownership.

No, Marth Burk pointed out that Augusta National Golf Club refused admittance of women because it clung to an outdated social norm that permits exclusion of certain types of people, in this case everyone except wealthy white males.   She then set out to change that norm by shaming the club into adopting a new one: that women are just as capable, and should not be shut out of important venues of social engagement solely because they have no penis.  Augusta gives a very important collection of elites a place to gather, interact, relax, network, and make plans.  That’s fine, and they of course have a right to exclude women if they believe that no woman can effectively contribute to their discussions.  But those of us who object have a right to shame them for it.

Jenkins must agree that this is the reason for exclusive clubs like this.  She notes that the “best way to become a member is to shark your way to the top of a large American company” and  goes on to say that if Augusta admits Ms. Rometty it will do so because the members “want to know what she thinks.”  But she doesn’t explain, however, why the club has not extended membership invitations to any of the other female at “the top of a large American company.”  Women run companies like Kraft Foods, Pepsico, and Arthur Daniels Midland, and these particular three all rate as having more influence than Virginia Rometty.  If Augusta’s members want to find some female corporate sharks they now have a target-rich environment, and if engaging powerful people is the goal, Ms. Rometty isn’t even the fattest target, at least according to CNN.  It’s not clear, for example, why the membership values the input of Frank Broyles, who claims fame as a former football coach at the University of Arkansas more than it would that of Irene Rosenfeld.  Maybe sharking your way to the top isn’t all that important after all, if your chromosomes line up the right way.

I’m frankly a bit surprised to hear a woman who succeeded in profession controlled by the same sort of paternalistic social norms — sports writing — argue that Augusta’s record reflects a history of seeking expertise and capability rather than one of discrimination.  I’m more shocked at her suggestion that Martha Burk should not have pointed out the obvious: that the sole criteria driving membership policies at Augusta National has always been that wealthy white men get invited to the party,  and the worthies who already enjoy the privilege of membership adjusted their criteria when pressured.  Augusta members — including Bill Gates and Melvin Laird according to reports — simply do not want to include women.  IBM may have forced their hand, and I have to wonder if anyone — perhaps her predecessor — thought of this when the firm chose her for the position.  Until they make a change, however, others may rightly shame them.  This is, after all, how social norms change, and a female sportswriter like Sally Jenkins should understand this better than most.

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Personal Responsibility and the Middle Class

Apr 4

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Capitalism, Corporations, Culture Wars, Economy, Income Inequality, Middle Class

Ron Haskins in the Washington Post on “The Myth of the Disappearing Middle Class:”

Brookings data show that if the same share of adults were married today as in 1970, poverty would be reduced by more than a quarter. And yet young women who have a high school degree or less education increasingly do not marry, and about 40 percent of their babies are born outside marriage, quadrupling the chance that they and their babies will live in poverty.

The claim that increasing marriage rates would reduce poverty reverses the causal arrow: it’s not marriage that makes people prosperous, it’s prosperity that makes marriage more likely.  Women — indeed people — who have little education don’t marry as often.

Elsewhere in the piece Haskins makes a good point about inequality: that many accounts of growing differences in wealth between the 1% and 99% do not include government tax policy and transfer payments in their calculations.  Still, as Mr. Haskins points out, the wealthy still achieved income gains of “well over 50%” while the bottom 20% showed “about 25% more income in 2007 than in 1979 when government programs and tax transfers are included.  And the Middle Class — defined here as those with income between 40 and 80 percent in the distribution — grew its income at or below 40%.  This still looks like a rapidly growing gap in income inequality to me.  And note that he cuts the calculation off in 2007, before the recession increased the gaps.

Mr. Haskins focuses on personal responsibility, and characterizes the poor as having only themselves to blame because they do not seek more education or marry and have children in the order he thinks they should.  But it should be said that many of today’s poor show quite a bit of personal responsibility in the sense that they work one or more menial jobs to make ends meet.  And they also work harder than ever before: in 2009, American workers produced almost$64,000 of wealth, according to the International Labor Organization, more than workers in any other country.  And yet wages have not risen, and with per capita income at less than $38,000 in 2009, it seems firms are not paying American workers what they should.  This is the real story of income inequality, and it shows why the Middle Class is in fact shrinking.  The problem is that American companies profit on the backs of very productive workers without sufficiently compensating them.  It’s not because young people don’t follow the “go to school and get married and have children” type of Leave it to Beaver lifestyle Mr. Haskins thinks they should.

Ron Haskins gave policy advice to George W. Bush on welfare policy, so it should not surprise anyone that his answer to the shrinking middle class is to scold those who can’t get traction in today’s global economy, however many jobs they work.  But why is this guy working for Brookings and the Center for American Progress?

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Giving the Game Away

Apr 3

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Abortion, Feminism, Health Care

I’ll go ahead and assume from the name that the writer of this letter to the Washington Post is a man.  If so, he more or less gives away the game on requiring that doctors perform ultrasounds on their patients who seek abortions: many men simply don’t believe that women are self-aware and capable of acting in their own behalf.

Mr. Kenny thinks it’s reasonable for the “state to require” that women are “fully aware of what’s being done” as they consider “ending a human life at its earliest stages.”  Whether or not you agree with him that early abortions end a human life, this shows a mind-boggling paternalistic failure to realize that pregnant women know exactly “what’s being done” when they seek to terminate a pregnancy.  Of course women know very well what’s happening to them, and they do not need Mr. Kenny or the state to explain it to them by intervening in the dialogue they have with their doctors.

 

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Crush Accountability II

Jan 15

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Gun Rights, Reactionaries, Right Wing Lies, Tea Party Movement, Uncategorized, Whack Jobs, Wingnuts, Wingnuttia

More prevarication from Crush Liberalism, the blogger who claims to value accountability but remains anonymous and deletes any comment that challenges her efforts to twist the words of others.  She (I’m assuming this is a female writer, since she tosses around insults like a 12-year-old girl — “Old Mayo Hair?”  Really?) is not alone: the right wing blogosphere is full of people twisting her words.

The juicy goodness of someone who writes under the name “Crush Liberalism” objecting to charges that people on the right have been less than civil, and her refusal to engage with anyone at her blog who challenges what she posts, suggest that whoever writes this crap should be taken less than seriously.  Still, it’s important to get straight exactly what Representative Schultz said — and whether she might be right.

In response to a question from the audience at a political event in New Hampshire, Schultz argued that discourse in the US has become divisive, and I doubt very many people on either side of the aisle would dispute this (her remarks begin at the six minute mark; the question comes at 24 minutes).  Further, the Tea Party is at least partially to blame — examples of their disruption of town hall meetings in 2009 are not difficult to find, and though less frequently they still use the strategy.  And it is a strategy — a plan to intentionally disrupt public debate and threaten political opponents, written by corporate interests who worry about the prospect of new limits on their ability to game the capitalist system.  Moreover, Tea Party activists have prayed for harm to their political enemies, and at least once even resorted to violence.

So Debbie Wasserman-Schultz correctly lays at the feet of the Tea Party and its corporate masters the blame for increased “edginess” in our public discourse.  Whether or not the increasingly divisive and violent rhetoric in our policy debates, which Schultz with some merit at least blames on the Tea Party, has anything to do with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords by an unstable citizen is another matter.  Jared Loughner obviously needs help, and though he bought into conspiracy theories and believed that women should not hold positions of power, there is no evidence that he developed these views through exposure to Tea Party ideas or attempted to assassinate Congresswoman Giffords for political reasons.  Still, there is no evidence showing that he didn’t, and with  Sharon Angle’s Second Amendment Remedies and Sarah Palin’s crosshairs — one on Gabby Giffords — Representative Schultz has a case for making this association.  Others have as well.

Ms. Crush is little more than an anonymous whack job parroting right wing talking points on a blog of little consequence, and does not rate much time spent in response even from a blog with (so far) no more influence than his own.  But two points need to be made:  that openly discussing violence as a political strategy and characterization of political opponents as evil and treacherous can be expected to create a society where some people — perhaps the unstable ones — will act on the suggestions their associated political leaders give them.  And lying hacks like Ms.Crush are at least partially responsible for this, since they do not push back when their leaders hang others in effigy.

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Sorry I Asked

Dec 31

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Edifying Blogs, Feminism, Norms, Norms and Social Construction, Patriarchy

I read Pandagon a lot.  The writing is good and the perspective generally interesting.  It’s an excellent source of information on what a certain social group is thinking and talking about, and folks there participate in a valuable discussion of the normative understandings that surround gender roles.  I rarely add to the conversation there, but yesterday I commented on this post by Amanda Marcotte.  She responded by asking if I intended to think her “extensive experience with sexist male discomfort with women reading is a figment of [her] imagination.”  Your mileage may vary with respect to the difficulty of getting this from what I wrote, but for the record no, I do not. Read the rest of this entry »

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Crush Accountability

Dec 28

Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Whack Jobs, Wingnuts

This is the kind of misleading crap the conservative blogosphere loves.  Note that the ad, and Mr.Crush both assert that President Obama made a claim he did not.  Then he bans commenters and deletes their challenges when they call him on it.

The President simply said that his foreign policy and legislative accomplishments compare favorably with other presidents, with the exception of three: LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln.  And indeed it does, given that in less than two years he completed a military action that Bush couldn’t accomplish in eight, and he passed landmark health care reform in the face of fierce opposition.  He successfully ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and pushed through a stimulus plan that kept the US economy from sliding into depression.  Mr. Crush may disagree that these were good policies, but he lies when he says the President did nothing or that he claimed to be the “4th best President in our nation’s history.”  It simply isn’t so.

This nut values accountability, but won’t let anyone hold him accountable.  Today’s right wing in a nutshell.

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