Month: February 2013

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A Sniff is Up to Snuff

I was amused to read neighboring articles about the credentials of college graduates and drug-sniffing dogs in the New York Times this morning (February 20, 2013). Both articles asserted that a credential of completing a degree was adequate to define competence for a task, or, as Justice Kagan declared, “A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test.”

In the case of the drug-sniffing dog, the dog’s behavior was probable cause for searching a truck, even though the driver had been stopped for an expired license plate.  The truck concealed a cache of ingredients for methamphetamine. Justice Kagan argued that “the dog’s substantial training and certification” established his competence to justify a search. Good dog, Aldo!

The subsequent article noticed a trend toward hiring college graduates for jobs that previously did not require a degree:

Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that didn’t used to require a diploma–positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters–are increasingly requiring one, according to Burning Glass, a company that analyzes job ads from more than 20,000 online sources, including major job boards and small-to-midsize-employer sites.

This trend has the benefit of putting more college graduates to work and the downside of keeping the less educated out of work. The Times noted that unemployment for high school graduates is 8.1 percent, while 3.7 percent of college graduates are unemployed.

Like Aldo, the drug-sniffing dog, college graduates are recognized as possessing initiative and discipline merely for gaining the paper credential of a bachelor’s degree.  Whether their degree shows aptitude for the legal profession or insurance underwriting is not a primary consideration, just as Aldo was not required to display a track record of drug-sniffing success to provide grounds for a search of a suspect’s car.

The larger issue is whether a paper credential proves your qualifications more than a proven aptitude for a task.  Credentials are probably over-rated in that they are not evidence of success on a particular task. On the other hand, most credentials are evidence of persistence over time, rather than a single performance, which could be a random success.  Drug-sniffing is an acquired skill and so are taking notes, drafting a document or analyzing data to draw conclusions.  Even if you are reasonably competent to perform these tasks, you are probably qualified for entry-level sniffing or greeting customers at the reception desk.

So your college major or relevant internships may not be your best qualification for a job. Your completion of a four-year program in something-or-other could qualify you for entry-level work.

Ultimately trusting the sniff of a dog or hiring an employee is an act of faith. We can’t know for sure we have hired the right dog or college graduate. We have to rely on our instincts along with the credential presented for the job. But that is what employers do: sniff out the best candidate and then bark their approval. Good choice! Good employer!

 

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What would Jesus cut?

For a year I’ve worn this yellow bracelet on my right wrist, a bracelet sent to every member of Congress by Sojourners, a Christian advocacy group. It says “What would Jesus cut?”

I sincerely doubt that Sojourners has a complete list of programs endorsed by Jesus, because they are smarter than that. Rather the bracelet is a reminder that people in power are accountable for the decisions they make, not just to the voters but to their conscience and their God.

Jesus, himself,  was pretty cagey about politics. He dodged every effort to make him a king, he refused to align himself with the religious or political establishment, and, confronted with the dilemma of paying or refusing to pay taxes to the Roman government, he said,

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.       (Mt 22:21)

I love that about Jesus: he refused to be manipulated for political gain. He did not covet power, and he spoke truth to power.  And that is what he expected of his followers.

So when I read the words, “What would Jesus cut?” I think of Jesus or God or your conscience standing by your shoulder to keep you from coveting influence or sucking up to power.  Pardon the coarse expression, but certain behavior is best described coarsely.

In my case, this admonition often means don’t join others who put down popular scapegoats, such as school administrators, apathetic  students, or Tea Party Republicans. They are easy targets, yet many of them try to heed their conscience against all odds.  I’ll admit to giving in to political diatribe now and then, but I believe that Jesus expects better of me.

In the case of Washington’s elite, it means don’t vote against your conscience just because the power brokers tell you to, whether they be Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid, John Boehner or Nancy Pelosi.  No one can presume to judge another’s conscience, but I think it is safe to say that we would not have gridlock in the Congress if everyone were voting his or her conscience.  Conscience is not that well-organized.

Imagine Jesus on the floor of Congress. Jesus, what about abortion? What about amnesty for illegals? What about trimming Medicare? What about reducing defense spending?  I don’t see Jesus asking how the party is voting or whether he will lose votes in the next election.  I don’t see him bargaining his vote to get on a committee he favors. I don’t see him intimidated by political heavyweights. And he expects the same of those who follow him.

If Jesus is not your exemplar, then your political conscience should speak to you.  Your conscience should have a voice at every vote, at every caucus, at every back room conversation where political bribes are offered.  You should not leap to compromise, if it involves your personal gain.

The politicos are shaking their heads and calling me naive, but plenty of Congressional icons have taken the high road through their careers. I’m not sure who voted their conscience in the recent vote on the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, but I know of four Senators who voted against their personal interests: Thad Cochran (Missisippi), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Johanns (Nebraska) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).  It’s a safe bet that these Senators will not be rewarded for voting against their party .

I smile when I see representatives crossing party lines to vote or standing strong on an issue they believe in, regardless of lobbyists or Congressional Whips. John McCain stood up for amnesty for undocumented residents. Chuck Hagel opposed the war in Iraq.  Kathleen Sibelius spoke out for women’s reproductive rights at the risk of excommunication from Church and Party.

I would be proud to be represented by such legislators and cabinet secretaries.  While I might disagree with them on other issues, I would respect their courage to vote their convictions and to buck the political tide. Party loyalty is very low on my hierarchy of values.  Jesus did not adhere to the tattered coalitions of power.

Jesus was not a Zealot nor an apologist for Rome. He visited with Pharisees and with tax collectors. He touched lepers and healed a Roman Centurion’s daughter.  He was almost murdered in his home village, and he was executed in Jerusalem, once holy, today a political pie. No one was less wedded to political power than Jesus.

And he expects the same of those who follow him.

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You and Yours

President Obama’s proposal for universal pre-school education appeared to have consensus support at the State of the Union Address. After all, one of the most conservative states, Oklahoma, boasted the most comprehensive pre-school education program. And no research on educational programs has shown more promise for success at school than pre-school education.

So I was shocked to learn in Gail Collins’ column this morning that this same proposal had been defeated by Presidential veto in 1971 and then persistently opposed by Congress in the 1970’s.  Apparently this proposal threatened the integrity of the family and, worse yet, foreshadowed a socialist society. Such rumors seldom lose their  force in households and the halls of government, once they are in circulation.

Bur “socialism” is a code word for sharing with others the benefits we already enjoy.  The subtext for “socialism” is that, once we’ve got ours, we won’t pay for yours. This was the message that undermined the Affordable Health Care Act. Except for a pang of conscience from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, that act would already be nullified.

When Congressional representatives declare that we can’t afford universal health care, what are they saying? We won’t pay for universal health care. We won’t pay for what “me and mine” already have, because that would mean paying for someone else– socialism!

The same argument is likely to emerge with pre-school education, because most comfortable families already provide pre-school education for their children from 2 to 4.  It will be no surprise when these children soar past their peers in grade school and get into the best colleges, because they have a”head start.”

But will we pay for other children to have the same head start?  Not if the relentless drumbeat of “socialism” begins to sound. The comfortable citizens will protest the empowerment of the vulnerable citizens, because they will be given what we had to earn.  We “earned” ours, now you can do the same.

I won’t even go into how arrogant this sounds. I’ll just invoke the Declaration of Independence, which Abraham Lincoln quoted when he composed the Emancipation Proclamation, and which just celebrated its 150th anniversary.

[T]hey are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Lincoln avowed that the black slaves had these same rights, despite their status and value as property 150 years ago.  The economic consequences of freeing human beings once regarded as property were prodigious. It would cost the comfortable households, both in the South and the North, their most valuable assets for the sake of “the pursuit of happiness” of people not commonly regarded as human. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Proclamation stirred discontent across the Union and nearly caused mutiny in the Union army (Team of Rivals).

History ultimately vindicated Lincoln, and the comfortable class yielded its property for the sake of human rights. De facto slavery is no longer acceptable in this country, but inequality is.

If the drumbeat of “socialism” stirs over the proposal of universal pre-school education, let’s call it what it is. It is not a wasteful federal program and something we can’t afford. It is extending opportunities to children who will then compete with our children in school and in life.  It is granting other families what we already enjoy for our own.  It is paying for “the pursuit of happiness,” when we are already pursuing it very well, thank you.

If this is socialism, then democracy belongs only to “me and mine.” You and yours can get your own.

 

 

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Cheaters!

When I first read about gerrymandering in eleventh grade U.S. History, my sense of injustice was inflamed.  What could this be called but “cheating,” pretending to give everyone a vote, but fixing the outcome? Mr. Smith calmed me down by explaining the practice had been controlled in the present era, which would have been the 1960’s.

Yet in the past year the re-drawing of voting districts for political advantage has again emerged under the guise of representing shifting populations following the 2010 census.  At the end of the current election cycle we can see the skullduggery active again: Republicans dominate state and Congressional elections despite being a distinct minority in the popular vote.

The gerrymandering of voting districts is a subtle form of voter fraud. The party currently in power in each state gets to draw the lines of the voting districts, pushing voters into districts that will be lopsided for one party, so that more of the other districts can be commanded by the other party. In a February 2 article in the N.Y. Times Sam Wang reported how he used statistical probability to show how re-drawn districts compared to those created by an unbiased computer simulation of the voting map. He particularly noticed gerrymandering in swing states controlled by Republican legislatures:

Confounding conventional wisdom, partisan redistricting is not symmetrical between the political parties. By my seat-discrepancy criterion, 10 states are out of whack: the five I have mentioned, plus Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Arizona was redistricted by an independent commission, Texas was a combination of Republican and federal court efforts, and Illinois was controlled by Democrats. Republicans designed the other seven maps. Both sides may do it, but one side does it more often.

Wang accused the state legislatures of changing the distribution of Republican voters in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In North Carolina Republicans changed a 7-6 disadvantage to a 9-4 advantage. In other words they gained three seats in the legislature merely by changing the district boundaries.

CHEATERS! my high school id cried out. While savvy politicians smiled and shook their heads, my heart churned with indignation. How can this be anything but manipulation of an ethical voting system, one that promises government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? Why should cheaters prevail?

Yet many politicians of the Republican persuasion believe if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying,

The N.Y. Times (February 5) documented how inequities in the voting process are achieved in outrageously long waits to vote and overly complex ballots, which slow the voting process to a crawl.  A study by the Orlando Sentinel and an Ohio State professor estimated that 200,000 Floridians were denied their right to vote by the length of lines at the polls.  The Florida legislature had previously reduced the days for early voting from fourteen to eight, and the ballot was a jungle of initiatives that would make a lawyer blink.  No one can tell me that this was not a premeditated strategy to keep less privileged voters from exercising their Constitutional rights. Florida’s problems with voter irregularities have been documented in 2000 and 2008, as well as in the past election year.

In contrast the Times article cited California as a paragon of enabling voting with smaller voting districts resulting in average wait times of six minutes. Florida’s average wait was 45 minutes.  Is it a coincidence that California has a  Democratic legislature, while Florida, a perennial swing state, has a Republican legislature? Even suffering the humiliation of questionable election practices in the 2000 presidential election has not humbled the Florida legislature to facilitate voting, because it is not in the political interests of Republicans to encourage voting.

This is not shrewd strategy, it is unethical voter suppression.  Of all the political shenanigans that tamper with fairness and equity, this is the most despicable, because it threatens a fundamental right of American citizens.  It approaches the manipulative practices of pseudo-democratic nations, which record landslides of 90% or more for the party in power.  Republicans supporting such schemes should blush with embarrassment when they speak of defending the U.S. Constitution and our precious freedoms.

Now I understand why Republicans were so astonished at losing the Presidential election, plus a handful of Congressional seats. They had rigged the election! They had predetermined its outcome!

Ah, but the Democrats registered and drove their supporters to the polls, winning an election by increasing voter registration and participation, of all things. Justice smiled in Florida, where President Obama won a close tally of votes, but it could have easily gone the other way. The ballot and the voting lines were mercilessly long.

Instead of improving their political appeal, Republicans tossed us a banana peel, and we slipped headlong into making them the majority party wherever representatives are elected by red-tainted voting districts and where voting regulations favor the shrewd and privileged.

Is politics so grimy that we can’t call “Cheater!” anymore? Is no one else outraged that one party consistently undermines democracy by scheming so only their kind gets to vote or gets represented? Is this not the most un-American scheme allowed by law?

Don’t tell me I’m a sore loser. My guys won, despite Republican dirty tricks. So there, CHEATERS!

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Quaint Practices of the 21st Century

Decades or centuries from now, historians will gasp in wonder at how the U.S. government employed technicalities to prevent the passage of bills and or to block “recess appointments” in the early 21st Century.  I’ll make that prediction, based on our eventual historical success thwarting absurd pronouncements such as the Dred Scott decision or resolutions of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The consequences of nominal Senate filibusters or the blocking of Presidential recess appointments by pretending that Congress is in session may not rise (or fall) to the same level as these dark moments in American history, but they subvert reasonable discourse to the same degree. History will certainly shed rational light on this.

In the case of the filibuster, still protected in the Senate, legislators may declare a debate in progress without actually debating.  I imagine myself attempting this strategy with my wife, as she pressed me to debate how we will spend our summer vacation.

Hold that thought, honey, while I find something better to do.

What? You want to keep discussing this?  Sorry, I put up the “filibuster” sign.

I don’t have to listen to you anymore.

Somehow I don’t see her buying the pretense that I am actually talking to her, while I switch on the football game or go to the store.  Yet U.S. Senators accept this absurd premise, because they don’t want to undermine the influence of the minority party.  It’s one thing to silence a minority Senator who wants to talk, but quite another to prevent discussion by merely raising the “Filibuster” sign.

Historians of the future will certainly scratch their heads to imagine debates being held without anyone actually talking. Or perhaps they will have a good laugh and invent “filibuster jokes” to satirize our era. “Two Senators walk into a bar. The senior member says ‘You’re buying today.’ The junior Senator pulls out his ‘filibuster’ card. ‘O.k.,’ says the other, ‘ I’ll have a bourbon and water without the bourbon.'”

The recent Court of Appeals decision to block recess appointments on the grounds that Congress was actually in session if anyone stepped into the chamber and turned on the lights, follows a similar logic of the filibuster. You don’t have to actually conduct business to be in session, you just need a junior representative to stop by and say “Anybody here?” This image conjures a scene from an Ionesco play, where one character debates with himself on irrelevant subjects.

Me: So, do you think the Redskins should have played RG III against Seattle?

Me: Who’s RG III?

It’s hard to take Congress seriously when they stoop to pro forma arguments using performances which really did not happen. If a Congress-person claims to speak without speaking or speaks to an empty chamber, was legislation actually considered?  If God was the witness to these events, God probably had to suppress a laugh.

History will certainly be laughing some day in the future, when sanity returns. In 2013 it is just plain pathetic.