Nihil Obstat

Zuccotti Park: June 15, 2013

2013-06-17T08:54:00.000-04:00

Protests against Turkish Premiere Recep Erdoğan in Zuccotti Park NYC, June 2013

How high is high?

2013-06-17T08:49:00.003-04:00

Charges Against Philly Demo Worker Underscore Complexities of Legal Pot

Accusations that the operator of the excavator that led to the deadly building collapse in Center City last week was high on marijuana raise compelling questions about how governments will regulate pot as states continue to decriminalize its use.

Prosecutors charged 42-year old-Sean Benschop with six counts of manslaughter after a toxicology test showed he was “unfit to perform safety-sensitive, job-related duties” due to the presence of marijuana in his blood stream. (The test also identified the presence of unspecified painkillers, which may or may not have been prescribed to him and may or may not have affected his ability to safely demolish a building.)

Since his arrest, witnesses have come forward to lend support to the claim that Benschop was high on the job. That’s good news for the D.A.’s office. Because, when it comes to marijuana impairment, forensic evidence alone is notoriously unreliable, and—if Benschop’s defense attorneys are worthy of the name—would be unlikely to convince a jury that he was intoxicated at the hour the Salvation Army Thrift Shop at 22nd and Market Street came crashing down.

Unlike alcohol, there is no equivalent to the Breathalyzer to gauge pot intoxication, so investigators typically use a combination of observational data, intuition and, in many cases, a blood test to construct evidence that a suspect is high. But almost all experts agree that the results of these tests are inadequate for determining if a person was actually impaired at the time the blood was drawn. Not only is there no universally accepted intoxication-threshold for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the active ingredient in marijuana—in the blood, even if there was one it would be subject to challenge.

For the most part, the chemistry of marijuana remains a mystery, and its effect on humans varies greatly from person to person. THC is stored in fat cells, and it can be detected in the body anywhere from days to months after smoking depending on a variety of issues, such as frequency of use, drug potency and individual physiology. All these factors make THC levels a poor metric for proving that a person was under the influence of marijuana at the time they were driving/operating machinery. (Philly Mag’s Nick Vadala explored this topic in detail last year in reporting on the case of Max Drosi, who was charged with vehicular homicide after a blood test showed he had THC in his system when he crashed his car into a small crowd of people at the Italian Market, killing an 11-year-old. Drosi claimed he was distracted by his GPS device.)

Drosi’s case is scheduled to go before a jury in January 2014, and prosecutors will no doubt rely on blood evidence to show the defendant was high at the time of the accident. If the federal government is to be believed, the evidence shouldn’t be too hard to challenge. According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA):

“It is difficult to establish a relationship between a person’s THC blood or plasma concentration and performance impairing effects. Concentrations of parent drug and metabolite are very dependent on pattern of use as well as dose. It is inadvisable to try and predict effects based on blood THC concentrations alone…”

Because the science is so elusive, laws governing stoned driving vary greatly from state to state—with most states relying on non-forensic variables, like observation and field sobriety tests, to prove impairment. Pennsylvania is one of just 16 states that impose so-called per se limits on the amount of allowable THC in drivers’ blood; and with the exception of the 11 states that have zero-tolerance policies that prosecute for any trace of THC, it maintains the lowest threshold for legal intoxication of any other per se state. In 2011, lawmakers in Harrisburg passed a bill reducing the THC threshold for driving under the influence from five nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) to just one ng/ml—so low that the commonwealth may as well be a zero-tolerance state. According to research, it’s not unheard of for blood to reflect THC levels of five ng/ml up to four hours after use, when most experts agree a user’s high has largely worn off; and heavy users can show THC levels as high as three ng/ml up to 12 hours after smoking.

Washington and Colorado, which both recently voted to legalize weed, are already grappling with the complex issues surrounding its regulation. Foremost among them is how to legislate driving while stoned. In April, the Colorado Senate rejected for the fourth time a bill to establish a legal impairment level of five ng/ml due largely to the lack of reliable research on THC intoxication.

“We are being asked to make policy by anecdote,” said Republican Senator Shawn Mitchell, a critic of the bill.

A similar measure passed last year in Washington over the objections of some legal experts that replaces “demonstrated impairment” with a per se threshold of five ng/ml; and in Oregon, where voters may get a second chance next year to approve legal recreational weed, battle lines are already being drawn over possible new drugged-driving statutes (Oregon currently has no per se limit on THC in the blood). Meanwhile, a court in Michigan recently ruled that that state’s per se drugged-driving law cannot be used to prosecute patients who are prescribed medical marijuana.

If the absence of reliable science on THC levels and intoxication isn’t bad enough, there is just as little data on just how much marijuana actually impairs driving judgment; and much of what is around suggests that it might not have much of an effect at all. A number of government-funded studies in the U.S., the Netherlands, Australia and Britain—including this one from the Department of Transportation—have shown that at least when it comes to driving a vehicle, pot has the opposite effect as alcohol, and actually makes people more cautious on the road.

Putting that question aside for the time being, it’s clear that more research is needed to develop a reliable and universal standard for THC intoxication. Ironically, while public sentiment towards recreational marijuana use is evolving, thanks to prohibition, the official science surrounding pot impairment is stuck in the dark ages and doesn’t appear to be getting any better. In the absence of adequate science, courts should consider throwing out unreliable blood evidence of THC intoxication and require criminal investigators to prove drivers were demonstratively impaired at the time of their arrest.

Friday Photog: On The Street Philly

2013-06-07T09:03:00.000-04:00

Lot, North Philadelphia, 2012

The problem with sex offender registries

2013-05-31T16:30:00.003-04:00

The ongoing plight of a Florida teen underscores the dysfunction of state laws that require sex offenders to register in a national database, even when they are teenagers and their “crime” consisted of nothing more than having a consensual relationship with someone a few years younger than them.
If you aren’t already familiar with the story, here are the details, courtesy of the Huffington Post:

“A Florida teenager faces criminal charges stemming from her relationship with another young female student. Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, faces two felony counts of ‘lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16′ after the parents of her 15-year-old girlfriend pressed charges earlier this year.”

According to media reports, the two teens—who were basketball teammates—met when Hunt was 17 and the “victim” was 14 and had been dating openly for several months. The younger girl’s parents, who opposed the relationship, filed a criminal complaint when Hunt became a legal adult. If convicted of the charges, Hunt faces more than a decade in jail and would be required to register as a sex offender. Last week she rejected a plea deal that carried a lesser penalty of two years of house arrest but still would have required her to register.

Many commentators have been focusing on the gay angle, claiming—at least semi-plausibly—that the youths were targeted because of their sexual orientation. Hundreds of thousands of supporters have signed a petition calling on prosecutors to drop the charges; and the case has drawn the attention of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, which is putting its own unique brand of pressure on officials in Indian River County, where the charges were filed.

But while the fact that the case involves two girls has certainly imbued it with an element of political dynamism, as many as 30 other cases just like it—almost all involving heterosexuals—fly under the radar each year in Florida. The real story is not so much that Hunt and her young lover were targeted, but that draconian sex laws have created a regime in which a high-schooler’s life can be ruined for engaging in a monogamous love affair with a classmate.

In 2013, there are nearly 750,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., including individuals convicted of non-violent crimes such as consensual sex between teenagers, prostitution and public nudity, as well as those who committed their only offenses decades ago. While national statistics generally do not separate youth sex offenders from others, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch, it’s not uncommon for children as young as 15—and in some cases 13—to end up on the registry.

Sex registries in the U.S. began in 1994 with passage of the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act—which required states to form a database of offenders convicted of sexually violent offenses or offenses against children. Two years later, the abduction and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey led to the law’s amendment to require law enforcement to make registration data public. While the laws were passed with the best of intentions, their implementation has created a number of problems for municipal governments and police and raised serious questions about the nature of criminal justice in America and the rights of offenders to reclaim their lives after serving their sentences.

Though they were originally designed to house the worst of the worst, sex offender registries have become so broad in their application that they’re practically useless. A search of Pennsylvania’s sex offender registry turns up 100 registered offenders within a one-mile radius of my house (one lives two block away). Should I be worried? It’s hard to say. Listed offenses include “aggravated indecent assault,” “unlawful contact or communication with a minor” and “sexual assault.” These sound pretty bad, but thanks to broad definitions and a lack of any specific information , it’s impossible to know whether I’m living near a child predator, a girl who made the mistake of sleeping with her 16-year-old boyfriend after she turned 18, or a homeless guy caught masturbating in a public park. The Keystone State is actually fairly conservative in its use of the registry; in New York, patronizing a prostitute is enough to land you on the sex offender list, and under old state sodomy laws—some of which were struck down as recently as 2003—oral sex between consenting participants technically qualified as a sex crime in places like Georgia and Texas.

And therein lies one of the problems. If the public is unable to discern genuine risk from a public sex offender database, the system is no longer working. Instead, registration has become its own form of punishment, which is contrary to how it was intended. Indeed, as they are currently applied, laws governing the movement of registered sex offenders seem carefully crafted to preventrehabilitation. Youth offenders are barred from attending school, while adults struggle to find work or even a place to live. It begs the question: Are we setting these people up for failure?

The restrictions have led to a range of unintended consequences. In 2009, Florida’s severe residency restrictions led to the creation of a sex-offender “shantytown” under a causeway in Miami. And in Suffolk County, New York, the law is so ridiculously stringent that the county was forced to erect two communal trailers to house their registered offenders. Last weekend, embarrassed officials began moving more than two dozen men to shelters. Given what we know about who winds up on sex offender registries, it’s likely only a few of these men are actually a risk to the community.

If sex offenders registries have legitimate purposes—and it could be argued that they do, when they are limited to repeat sexual predators—protecting the community from someone like Kaitlyn Hunt is definitely not one of them.

There's something rotten in the state of Virginia

2013-05-22T16:15:00.003-04:00

Even if you haven’t been closely monitoring the Virginia governor’s race, chances are that by now you’ve heard something about the two characters the GOP is running to replace outgoing Republican Bob McDonnell and his number two, Bill Bolling, the current lieutenant governor.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Pastor E.W. Jackson—bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries and president of the cryptically named conservative Christian group Staying True to America’s National Destiny (S.T.A.N.D.)—were nominated to represent their party in the November 5th general election during a closed-door convention on Saturday that drew roughly 8,000 of the state’s most conservative voters.

The nominations make Cuccinelli, who is 44, the youngest GOP candidate for Virginia governor in two decades and Jackson the first African-American to receive the party’s endorsement since 1988 (and only the second since Reconstruction). But the candidates’ distinctions don’t end there. While their predecessors attempted (sometimes unsuccessfully) to shy away from extremist social positions and honor Virginia’s increasingly moderate constituency, Cuccinelli and Jackson are unwavering in their Christianized-Tea Party objectives and have publicly espoused views that make Ted Cruz sound like Karl Marx.

As a gubernatorial candidate Cuccinelli has been playing it safe on the campaign trail. He tacked to the center in his acceptance speech, and his television ads have focused on pragmatic issues like job creation and the plight of the mentally ill. But don’t be fooled. Beneath the starched shirts and power ties is an extremely polarizing culture warrior who has made it abundantly clear that he holds views well outside the Republican mainstream.

Cuccinelli’s political philosophy was perhaps best summed up by Richmond journalist Peter Galuszka, who described the candidate as unyieldingly anti-government, “except where it interferes with his views on sex, gays and marriage.”

A staunch Catholic (he has seven kids), Cuccinelli opposes birth control and earlier this year equated his fight against Obamacare’s contraception mandate with Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights legacy. He’s compared the anti-choice movement to the fight to abolish slavery, offended members of his own party when he instructed the state’s public universities to reverse policies that banned discrimination of LGBT people, and lobbied for the enforcement of the state’s unconstitutional “Crimes Against Nature” laws, which would make it a Class 6 felony to get a blow job from your wife. As AG, Cuccinelli was not above leveraging the power of his office for political purposes. A climate change skeptic, he pursued a bogus two-year fraud investigation against climatologist Michael E. Mann until the Virginia Supreme Court ordered him to stop.

Cuccinelli does have at least one redeeming quality: His formative years among Jesuits appear to have imbued him with a robust, if often flawed, sense of social justice. (He once gave $100,000 in surplus campaign money to a medical clinic for the homeless.) But such glimmers of humanity, which the Cuccinelli camp is trying hard to emphasize, are likely to be overshadowed by the Harvard-educated wing nut his party’s delegates have seen fit to attach him to for the next seven months.

E.W. Jackson, the nominee for Lieutenant Governor, believes that the Christian Bible is the “inerrant Word of God and the infallible rule of faith and conduct.” In 2009, he took issue with President Obama’s inaugural speech assertion that “all religions are equal,” claiming that the President offended Christians by implying their religion isn’t the best one. He’s called gays “very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally” and has drawn a direct link between homosexuality and pedophilia. In a “Message to Black Christians” recorded in 2012, Jackson evoked the Book of Exodus to urge black voters to abandon their “slavish devotion” to the Democratic Party and compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan.

If you’re wondering how a state that voted twice for Barack Obama and has been hailed as a beacon of the emerging “New South” managed to wind up with fringe radicals as candidates for its highest offices you can chalk it up to backroom dealing orchestrated by the state’s most conservative Republicans—who overrode the carefully laid succession plans of the governor himself to elevate one of their own without pesky voters getting in the way. In 2011, the GOP agreed to shift from a convention to an open primary to nominate their statewide candidates, hoping to appeal to a broader base. (Virginia gives its political parties wide latitude in determining how they choose their candidates.)

McDonnell had promised to support his second-in-command, Bolling, who had deferred his own ambitions for the Executive Mansion to support the Governor for reelection in 2009. You know what they say about the best-laid plans. Last June, the Tea Party-stacked central committee of the Virginia Republican Party staged a coup and voted to rescind the planned primary in favor of a closed convention open only to “credential Republicans.” As a rule, voters who are willing to give up a Saturday in May to spend the day casting ballot after ballot are the most ideologically motivated. Bingo. You’ve got your radicals.

Critics of the move say it effectively disenfranchised thousands of the state’s Republican voters, most notably all active duty military. Sensing a bloody turf war, Bolling pulled out of the race “for the good of the party” paving the way for what pollsters correctly opined would be the “coronation” of Cuccinelli at Saturday’s convention.

According to Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, while Cuccinelli had a good chance of pulling off a primary win, Jackson—who scored only 12,000 votes in his last statewide run for office—didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell without the convention. At best, that could mean serious trouble for the Cuccinelli campaign; at worst. it could mean a very scary four years for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

On The Street

2013-05-17T12:47:00.002-04:00

Santiago, Chile (2012)

When being gay can get you fired

2013-05-03T08:58:00.000-04:00

Last week Philadelphia City Council became a pioneer in the advancement of civil rights when it passed groundbreaking legislation that greatly broadens equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people living and working in the city.

The bill – which was introduced by Councilman Jim Kenney with backing from the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and gay rights groups – is comprised of a handful of important measures, including new tax incentives for businesses that expand healthcare coverage to life partners of their homosexual employees. It also guarantees hospital and prison visiting rights to domestic partners, expands the rights of gay parents, and assures that surviving partners of gay city workers and contractors enjoy equal access to pension, retirement and survivor benefits.

The legislation is being hailed as the most comprehensive in the nation in support of gay equality and represents a huge win for the city’s LGBT population. But the very fact that it is necessary at all speaks to the systemic barriers homosexuals are regularly forced to confront in pursuit of the basic rights the rest of us take for granted. Only 18 states and the District of Columbia have statutes explicitly allowing homosexual couples to jointly adopt children; and in 29 states (including Pennsylvania) it’s still legal for a private employer to fire a worker simply because he or she is gay. In 34 states it’s legal to terminate an employee for being transgender. Meanwhile, efforts to strengthen state anti-bullying laws to include protections for gay and lesbian youth have met stiff resistance from conservative groups in places like Michigan and Arizona; and many private schools and institutions—most notably the Boy Scouts of America—continue to defend anti-gay policies.

A bill to rectify at least one of these wrongs by protecting gay workers from wrongful termination was introduced last week in the U.S. Senate. But you wouldn’t know that from the dearth of media reporting on the subject. That could be because the same-sex marriage issue has become the dominating story line for media covering the fight for gay equality; or it could have something to do with the fact that every Congress since 1994 – with the exception of just one – has been asked to consider legislation similar, if not identical, to the bipartisan Employee Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 (ENDA).

Modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ENDA – which enjoys broad-based public support – would prohibit most public and private employers from discriminating against workers based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon – who is one of more than 150 co-sponsors of the legislation in both houses of Congress – sees the shifting trend lines on Capitol Hill as sign the time has come to finally pass ENDA.

“Americans understand that it’s time to make sure our LGBT friends and family are treated fairly and have the same opportunities as all Americans,” said Merkley. “Now it’s time for our laws to catch up. People should be judged at work on their ability to do the job, period.”

At the state-level, lawmakers and gay rights activists in Harrisburg have labored for years to remove Pennsylvania from the list of states lacking workplace protections for LGBT people. While Pennsylvania law includes protections for state employees who are gay -- and a handful of municipalities and the counties of Allegheny, Erie and Philadelphia have passed laws protecting gays and lesbians from harassment and wrongful termination -- 70 percent of the commonwealth remains uncovered by LGBT non-discrimination laws. The most recent attempt to pass a statewide law, House Bill 300, was referred to the State Government Committee in April 2011, but it never made it out. In March, that bill’s sponsor said he is planning to reintroduce the legislation this session.

Polls show that most Pennsylvanians support extending basic workplace protections to LGBT employees; and all 24 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the commonwealth have already voluntarily implemented their own ENDA policies. But some religious groups objected to the legislation on ideological grounds, claiming that a law protecting gays and lesbians from wrongful termination would violate their own right to fire (or not hire) someone based on their moral convictions. State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, called the legislation “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

The data suggests he's pretty wrong about that. While recent statistics on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation are hard to come by (particularly in Pennsylvania) past government studies show the problem is very much a real one. The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School has documented “widespread” discrimination based on sexual orientation, with more than a quarter of gays – and more than three-quarters of transgender people – saying they have faced on the job harassment. A study of administrative complaints filed by public sector workers in 18 states, including Pennsylvania, found that the rate of filings alleging sexual-orientation discrimination in employment is at least comparable to the rate of complaints filed on the basis of race or sex.

As the fight to legalize same-sex marriage picks up steam (and supporters) in Washington D.C., it’s important we not forget that access to the institution of matrimony is not the only right being denied to our LGBT friends and family members. For homosexuals vying for equal status in society, legalizing same-sex marriage is an important step, but it’s not a magic pill. Until LGBT people are entitled to basic protections against workplace discrimination, they will remain second-class citizens in a nation that prides itself on freedom and equal opportunity for all.

Did your wardrobe contribute to Dhaka?

2013-05-01T08:16:00.000-04:00

For years I’ve practiced a little ritual when I shop for clothes. I got it from watching my father, who, like his father before him, spent decades in the textiles industry until he was forced into retirement when his last remaining customer moved his manufacturing to Southeast Asia.

It’s a three-part process that begins with me running my fingers along the inseams of whatever garment I’m considering buying to check the quality of the stitch (one of the best ways to tell how well your clothes have been made). Next, I check the label to see where it was made; and finally I glance at the price tag. This last step is usually proceeded by me hanging the item back on its hanger and muttering obscenities while I search for the clearance rack.

My cynicism is not unjustified. I remember visiting my dad’s shop one day in the early 1990s when he was still making clothes for the Urban Outfitters line Free People. He pointed to a mound of simple cotton sheath dresses piled high on the finishing table. “See that,” he said, indicating a stray garment. “That costs me about $2.50 to make. You know how much they sell it for?” He didn’t have to tell me. Having accompanied my girlfriend on more than one Urban shopping adventure I already knew the answer: A lot more than they paid for it.

I don’t know how many of Urban Outfitters’ dresses are still made in the U.S., but thanks to our demand for cheap goods, trade liberalization, and the rise of mass retail outlets like Walmart, I do know that, today, even $2.50 is too much for most profit-driven retailers to pay for a garment—especially when they can get it made for half that much in Cambodia or Vietnam or Bangladesh, where the national minimum wage of roughly $10 a week is among the lowest in the world.

Last week, when a factory block outside the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka collapsed—killing nearly 400 workers and sparking a frantic days-long search for survivors—rescuers found garments and labels from Canada’s Joe Fresh, Italian clothing company Benetton, and Mango of Spain in the rubble. Published media reports have also linked brands from J. C. Penney, Children’s Place and Cato Fashions to the compound.

While the scope of the Dhaka tragedy is unprecedented, the circumstances that made it possible are not. The cause of the collapse has been linked to simple greed. The building’s owner had received an illegal permit to build a five-story structure, but decided to maximize his investment by pushing it to an unsound eight floors instead.

But it’s not limited to Bengali slum lords; it's a vicious chain that reaches all the way back to the boardrooms of some of the world's preeminent clothiers and -- whether they know it or not -- right into the closets of millions of bargain-hunting consumers. Research shows that brand-name clothing and accessories boast among the highest markup rates of all retail goods, regularly exceeding 300 percent. To provide consumers with the low prices they need and still make the obscene profit margins they've become accustomed to, many retailers are compelled to scour the globe in search of the lowest possible labor costs. Is it any wonder they often discover low labor standards as well?

To be fair, many companies do have processes in place to audit foreign vendors for compliance to basic health and human rights codes and penalize them for deviating from them. However, inspections are often irregular, and it’s not surprising that over the years, a number of popular brands—including Nike, Disney, the Gap, Burberry and Banana Republic—have been linked to foreign sweatshop scandals. Even the Duchess of Cambridge has not been immune to scrutiny.

Still, the fact that a garment was made by low-paid workers in a developing country should not alone spark an ethical quandary for the conscious consumer. The problem isn’t that low-wage factories exist (some liberal economists even say that sweatshops are a necessary first step on a developing nation’s road to economic prosperity); rather the problem is how they are forced to operate to meet the extreme cost and scheduling requirements of retailers seeking to avoid strong U.S. labor and wage constraints.

Groups like the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights and the International Labor Rights Forum issue regular reports on specific industries and companies; and the United Nations-sponsored International Labour Organization (ILO) drafts and monitors a range of fair labor agreements with individual nations. But, according to activists, all are lacking a viable enforcement regime.

That means it’s up to consumers (and a handful of proactive, ethically minded retailers) to do their homework if they want to avoid funneling money to labor-rights violators. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. According to ILF’s Trina Tocco: “It’s hard to find companies producing completely responsible garments because there are so many stages in the supply chain: gathering raw material, spinning it into cloth, dyeing the cloth, and cutting and sewing the garments. You could have a union-made garment made of cotton picked by a child laborer.”

So what’s a shopper to do? While an unusually low price tag may be a good indicator that a product has been made under exploitative conditions (yes, I’m talking to you, H&M), it’s certainly not the only one. Lots of top-line retailers with high markups have been linked to unscrupulous labor practices. The best thing to do is educate yourself on who the repeat violators are and avoid labels that reflect that a garment was made in a country known for rampant labor rights violations (Bangladesh being one). Most of all, be conscious that the great deal you managed to swing on your wardrobe could have been forged on the back of an exploited laborer.

One from the Stacks: The Journals of André Gide (1889-1949)

2013-04-23T17:09:00.002-04:00


Journals of André Gide, Volume I (1889-1924)

I picked the individual books in this set up separately, roughly one year apart, and have spent many evenings inside the mind of M. Gide, who surely counts as one of my favorite authors. I found Volume II first, which, obviously, covers the latter part of Gide's career, starting with his famous voyage to the Congo in 1927. I serendipitously stumbled on Volume I (I had not been actively seeking it) at a library sale. This volume starts with a single entry from the fall of 1889, when Gide was 20, where he describes surveying the location of a planned salon with his friend "Pierre" (Pierre Louÿs).

Stay tuned for more Gide to follow in future installments.

Details:

The Journals of André Gide Volume I (paperback)
By André Gide
Published by Vintage Books, New York (1956)
Originally published in four volumes by Alfred A. Knopf,
1947, 1948, 1949, 1951
Introduction by Justin O'Brien
Purchase date/price: 2002, Library sale (unknown) $2.00
Condition: good (several notations in red pencil on title page)

Journals of André Gide Volume II (1924-1949)

Details:

The Journals of André Gide Volume II (paperback)
By André Gide
Published by Vintage Books, New York (1956)
Originally published in four volumes by Alfred A. Knopf,
1947, 1948, 1949, 1951
Introduction by Justin O'Brien
Purchase date/price: 2001, Title Page in Bryn Mawr, $2.00
Condition: fair (fading, some cover damage)

About this project

Marriage traditionalists are fighting the wrong battle

2013-04-18T15:31:00.001-04:00

In light of the vociferous and ongoing debate surrounding gay marriage, it’s easy to imagine that self-described “marriage traditionalists” rose up organically in opposition to expanding the definition of marriage to include spouses of the same sex. However, you’d be wrong to think that. The marriage movement—which now claims, erroneously, that the incursion of gays and lesbians into its hallowed halls will weaken the institution—actually began as a response to a real threatto the contract of matrimony: the no-fault divorce.

First introduced by the Bolsheviks as a means of undermining the power of the church in post-Revolution Russia, unilateral no-fault divorce—which is how more than 80 percent of marriages in the U.S. end—eliminates the need for an aggrieved spouse to show that his or her partner has violated the vows of marriage before being granted dissolution. Under the old “fault-based” system, parties seeking a divorce had to provide evidence of one of a handful of marriage deal-breakers, including abuse, abandonment, cruelty, or adultery (and in case you’re wondering, in Pennsylvania oral sex is not considered adultery). It was an admittedly sloppy system, and led to a spike in attorney-sanctioned perjury as couples created elaborate lies to convince judges they met the necessary criteria. In response, some states, including New York, amended their codes to allow for divorce without cause, but it still wasn’t easy. Spouses were required to spend up to two years officially separated before their marriage was declared kaput.

All that changed in 1969, when then-Governor Ronald Reagan—himself a divorcee—launched the divorce reform revolution by making California the second state in the nation to allow unilateral divorces based on “irreconcilable differences.” (Reagan later called it the biggest mistake of his political career). Other states followed suit, and a spate of no-fault laws in the 1970s led to a surge (triple digits by some accounts) in the number of divorces and gave rise to the traditional marriage movement. (It also produced the so-called covenant marriage, in which spouses agree to severely limit the grounds by which they may divorce each other).

All 50 states now sanction no-fault divorce, making marriage the only legally binding contract that a person can break without the consent of the other party and without facing any penalty. Under those terms it’s almost hard to call it a contract at all.

Proponents argue that no-fault statutes protect women by changing the power balance in a marriage and making men more likely to “behave themselves” because they know their wives can simply walk out. Indeed, there is evidence that the incidence of domestic abuse dropped with the end of divorce “for cause.” But it’s not clear why. The forces that keep men and women in abusive relationships are complex and often have nothing to do with the law (think how many women refuse to press charges against their abusive husbands). Prior to no-fault divorces there was nothing in the law that prevented spouses from leaving one other; and domestic abuse—not to mention abandonment—has always been grounds for unilaterally ending a marriage.

What the “no-fault divorce is good for women” line of reasoning seems to overlook is that divorce goes both ways. Men leave their wives too; and critics of no-fault, including some progressives, say that contrary to expectations, unilateral divorces often leave women holding the short end of the stick. In 2010, when New York was on its way to becoming the last state in the nation to pass a no-fault divorce law, the state chapter of the National Organization of Women spoke out against the measure, arguing that no-fault divorces sap the negotiating power of the least powerful spouse in a marriage (often the wife). Writing for the Daily Beast about her own unsuccessful fight to save her marriage, Beverly Willett, co-chair of the non-partisan Coalition for Divorce Reform, argued that no-fault divorce devalues the non-economic reasons for resisting a spouse’s bid to end a marriage. “We would never stand for arranged marriages, so why do we tolerate unilateral divorce, where the power rests in one person’s hands to vote on behalf of the whole family?” She wrote.

So where do marriage traditionalists fit in? Well for years they focused their efforts on proactively strengthening the institution of marriage by promoting public policies that encouraged long-term commitments—primarily a fight against the no-fault divorce.

In its “Statement of Principles” (released in 2000), The Marriage Movement—a coalition of three conservative “pro-family” organizations, including David Blankenhorn’s Institute for American Values—makes no mention of homosexuality at all, or even men and women for that matter, defining marriage as a contract that “creates formal and legal obligations and rights between spouses.” Even at this stage, the marriage movement was one of positive reinforcement, not denial of rights. That changed when marriage traditionalists decided to turn their spears away from the forces that weakened marriage and point them instead at Americans who wished to help them celebrate it.

Thankfully some are beginning to see the hypocrisy in that. “As long as there is no political will around divorce than [sic] it seems like our main concern is keeping gay people out of marriage rather than restoring marriage itself,” wrote Evangelical blogger Matthew Lee Anderson earlier this week. Blankenhorn, previously an outspoken foe of gay marriage, did an about-face last year and has since dedicated himself to building an alliance of pro-marriage gays and straights who are committed to strengthening the institution.

I think that’s a step in the right direction. While only the most committed true believers would argue that we should go back to a system where divorce is granted only in the most extreme cases, holding couples to a two-year waiting period, or penalizing the party who breaks the marriage contract without cause may make people think before they jump impulsively into (or out of) a marriage. After all, what good is a contract if it’s not enforceable? If marriage traditionalists really want to protect the institution, they should recommit themselves to reforming no-fault divorce laws instead of opposing the expansion of the institution of marriage to all couples just because they don’t like the way those couples have sex.

The faulty logic of Obamacare's smoking surcharge

2013-04-11T12:55:00.003-04:00

Next year states will begin implementing major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the most controversial of these being the “individual mandate” – which requires all Americans to have health insurance – and the establishment of private exchanges where the uninsured can purchase coverage. Buried within the minutiae of more than a thousand pages of new legal code are a number of so-called “wellness programs” designed to encourage Americans to take a more proactive stake in their own health and well being. Among them is a contentious clause that permits insurers in state exchanges to levy a surcharge of up to 50 percent on beneficiaries who smoke on the grounds that tobacco users’ high-risk behavior justifies singling them out. By one estimatethe policy would amount to $5,100 a year in extra premiums for a 60-year old smoker.

Not everyone is buying the White House’s logic. Earlier this week the District of Columbia followed Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermontin announcing that it will prohibit insurers from raising premiums for smokers. According to Mohammad Akhter, M.D., chair of D.C.’s health insurance exchange board, a smoker surcharge violates the very spirit of the ACA, which expressly bans insurers from basing their fee structures on presumed risk factors (a practice known as underwriting):

“Tobacco use is a pre-existing medical condition and a central tenet of our health reform efforts is to open the health insurance market to millions of people who have been shut out due to their health. Charging smokers significantly more for health insurance is in direct conflict with our efforts to help people quit smoking.”

Critics of the surcharge say that it wrongfully discriminates against one high-risk behavior while ignoring dozens of others. For instance, research shows that the 34 percent of Americans who are obese add an additional $190 billion to the U.S. medical billeach year, and obese workers are 42 percent more expensive to cover than employees who are “height-weight proportionate.”

To justify this clear double standard, architects of the smoker surcharge say that while obesity is a legitimate “heath status” tobacco use is a choice. Yet, as anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of addiction science will understand, this opens up a dangerous can of worms. Court rulings against the tobacco industry have repeatedly described nicotine as an addictive substance, and the medical community – and their counterparts in the recovery field – have gone to great lengths to impress upon officials and the public that drug and alcohol addiction is a disease. Addicts are eligible for all sorts of temporary government aid under this assumption – including access to medical services; to make nicotine addicts pay more for health care on the grounds that their addiction is a choice risks undermining years of addiction advocacy.

Nevertheless, many private insurers already assess a higher premium on tobacco users; employees who light up at major firms including Macy’s, PepsiCo and Gannett pay an average of $500 more a year for health insurance. Meanwhile, other employers are adopting even more stringent policies designed to weed out the smokers on their payrolls. Back in 2005, Montgomery County came close to becoming the first county in the nation to ban smokers from government jobs (officials backed off amid a public backlash); and effective July 1, 2013, the University of Pennsylvania Health System will cease hiring smokers and assess tobacco users who are already working for the organization a higher premium.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books expressly prohibiting employers from disciplining their workers for legal activities engaged in during off-hours (Pennsylvania isn’t one of them); but in states where they can get away with it, a number of companies have instituted autocratic policies designed to force smokers to quit the habit or quit their job. Here’s four of the most extreme:

Better pass the sniff test

New Hampshire-based Kimball Physicshas been enforcing an austere anti-smoking policy since the 1990s, when the state ruled that it was illegal for the company to hire only non-smokers. The rules are simple: If you smoke you can still work at Kimball, but you’re not allowed on the premises if you smell like cigarettes. To enforce the rule, employees entering the facility must pass by a receptionist who administers a sniff test. According to company policy: “No tobacco-residuals emitting person, article of clothing, or other object is allowed inside any Kimball Physics building. This restriction also applies to anyone or anything emitting characteristic tobacco odors. Anyone who has used a tobacco product within the previous two hoursis automatically to be turned away, unless measures have been taken such that residuals-sensitive persons are not exposed.”

Light up and lose your job (your spouse too)

In 2005, Weyco Inc., a Michigan-based medical benefits administrator, began administering a breath test to its 200 employees to identify smokers. Those who refused to kick the habit were shown the door (four employees chose to quit in protest before even taking the test). In January of 2006, the company took the policy a step furtherby extending the non-tobacco use guidelines to employee spouses. Employees whose husbands or wives refuse to take a test or came up positive wouldn’t be fired, but the workers would be fined $1,000 a year until their loved ones quit.

Please spread the message

According to the Seattle Times, since 2002 the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department— which does not hire smokers — has made applicants sign an “affidavit of non-tobacco use” and pledge to “educate” citizens caught smoking within 50 feet its the building.

Prepare to pee in a cup

In 2005 the Massachusetts company that makes Scotts Miracle-Groissued a ban on smoking on or off the job and began instituting random urine tests for nicotine. The next year the company was sued by an employeewho was fired on his birthday two weeks after starting his job as a lawn-care technician because his test showed he had smoked. A federal judge ruled that the company was within its rights to fire the man because he has been made aware of the policy before he was hired. In a court filing, the attorney for the plaintiff pointed out that Scotts has no policies compelling employees to abstain from other legal but unhealthy practices, such as consuming alcohol, eating processed sugars or spreading toxic chemicals on lawns.

The revolution will not be feminized

2013-04-04T11:39:00.002-04:00

Today, women around the world are being encouraged to bare their breasts in solidarity with a young Tunisian activist whose decision to publicly profess her desire for self-determination unleashed a fury of condemnation across North Africa and revealed the extent to which the Arab Spring has abandoned its female participants.

Last month, Amina Tyler published topless photos of herself on Facebook with the words “My body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honor” written across her chest in Arabic to protest the absence of adequate protections for women in Tunisia’s draft constitution. The photos quickly went viral, and Amina’s message of provocation fell squarely on its intended target: the conservative Tunisian men who activists say have hijacked the democratic revolution of 2011 to push the country closer to Sharia law. The backlash was swift and severe, with one Salafist preacher calling for the 19-year-old student to be stoned to death.

“Her act could bring about an epidemic,” said the preacher, Adel Almi. “It could be contagious and give ideas to other women. It is therefore necessary to isolate [the incident].”

Almi – who leads a group known, oddly enough, as the “Moderate Association for Awareness and Reform” – represents the most conservative wing of the many political groups that have been jostling for power in Tunisia since a pro-democracy uprising toppled the regime of autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. But his comments are emblematic of the Arab world’s pervasive culture of misogyny, which, in many ways, has become more pronounced in wake of the mass revolutions of the Arab Spring.

Within days of their posting the pictures were down and Amina seemed to have disappeared, prompting a frenzied search and reports that she had been institutionalized by her family. She eventually turned up at her parents’ home, but by then the incident had taken on a life of its own, and Amina emerged as the cause celebre of an international movement to draw attention to the second-class status of women in Tunisia and other Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. By last week thousands of people had signed a petition supporting Amina, and an open letter defending her “life and liberty” boasts signatures of dozens of activists and intellectuals, including the prominent British atheist Richard Dawkins. The Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN issued an call to arms for an “International Topless Jihad Day” under the motto “Our tits are deadlier than your stones!”

“On 4 April, we will remind the Islamists and the world that the real epidemic and disaster that must be challenged is misogyny – Islamic or otherwise,” the group stated.

Despite all the high hopes surrounding the Arab Spring and its calls for democracy and reform, women appear to have gained little in return for their sacrifices. Women and girls stood side-by-side with men against autocratic regimes during uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere – risking physical harm and even death – yet they have found themselves increasingly marginalized in post-revolutionary political life in those countries, where Islamic groups have managed to dominate many areas of political life.

In 2011, less than a month after the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, women celebrating International Women’s Day in Egypt’s Tahrir Square were set upon by groups of men who demanded they go home and “wash clothes.” Egypt is now facing an epidemic of violence against women, with bands of young men roaming the streets like packs of animals looking for prey to set upon. More than 80 percent of Egyptian women say they have experienced sexual harassment in the nation’s streets, but random sexual attacks on women have surged since the fall of Mubarak – whose police state did a far better job of preventing street harassment than the current administration led by former Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi. Some Egyptian officials have even gone so far as to blame the victims.

Activists contend that the attacks have a political motive, and are being orchestrated by Islamic hardliners to keep females from participating in the public sphere. The new government in Egypt eliminated a quota for female representation in Parliament and the country’s constitution — which was signed by President Morsi last December — contains few if any protections for women.

While the situation is not quite as bad in Tunisia – where a quota left over from the Ben Ali days requires 30 percent of Parliament to be female – women like Amina are routinely treated as second class citizens. And the rising tide of Islamism in the country threatens to undo the rights women ironically achieved under the very dictator they helped overthrow.

The role of women in traditional societies has always been tenuous, but perhaps nowhere is their status held in lower regard than in traditional Islamic societies. Presumptive U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan maintain atrocious records on women’s rights; and in Afghanistan, families still sometimes use their girls to pay off debts.

I don’t have breasts, but if I did, I’d bare them today for women like Amina, who have sacrificed so much for so little.

One from the Stacks: Last Exit to Brooklyn

2013-03-29T15:58:00.002-04:00

First Paperback Edition, Second Printing

It's been an awfully long time since I've posted an installment of One From The Stacks. No, I haven't run out of books. I've hardly scratched the surface. I just realized that it was a much bigger commitment than I ever imagined it would be. Words are part of the problem. My words, that is. I am a loquacious writer, which means a series of installments I expected to run around 500 words a piece turned into essays at least three times that size. Then again, how do you keep yourself from overindulging in something that brings you so much enjoyment and illumination? Unfortunately, I'm also a very busy writer. Well actually that's a good thing. But it does have its drawbacks. Like finding myself with less and less time during the week to devote to leisurely activities like reveling in my favorite books for the benefit of the handful of people who are likely to visit this blog on any given day.

For a while I just thought I'd let OFTS pass into oblivion -- just one more ambitious project I'd never take to completion. It was time to admit failure. Anyway, who'd notice? Well I would, for one. When I started this project I wanted to “give my books a second life on the Web.” That hasn't changed; I just never thought it would be so time consuming. I decided there had to be an easier way.

So, after giving it some thought I've decided to make OFTS a more collaborative effort. I'll keep posting my library, one book at a time, but instead of turgid winding discourses on what the books meant to me personally, how the author touched my life, or the impact they had on the world of literature, philosophy, politics or criticism, I'm leaving it to you to fill in the blanks. Feel free to share your own thoughts on the book, the author or anything else that suits you in the comments field below. Or don't. Either way, it is my pleasure to share this very special part of my life with you.

Details:

Last Exit to Brooklyn (Stories)

By Hubert Selby Jr.

Published by Grove Press, Inc. New York, 1965

First Paperback Edition

Original publication: 1957

Purchase info: NA (“borrowed” from a friend's library circa 1999)

Condition: Fair (slight cover damage, brittle pages)

About this project

A sad, last-ditch effort against gay marriage

2013-03-26T15:19:00.001-04:00

Today, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in back-to-back cases challenging California’s Prop 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. I’ve made no mystery of my support for legalizing gay marriage, or my belief that allowing same-sex couples to wed is the best way I can think of to save a valuable, but threatened, institution. However, as a dedicated heterosexual with a spouse of the opposite sex, I never in a million years imagined that the fight to deny marriage rights to gays and lesbians would find me and my wife in its crosshairs. But that’s exactly what happened earlier this month, when a determined fringe of mostly young conservatives decided that the best way to stop the march of history is to build a roadblock so steep that no gay or lesbian couple could possibly surmount it. It didn’t seem to matter to them that in the process they would delegitimize millions of straight marriages too.

The young upstarts laid out their position publicly last week in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. The crux of their scheme is simple enough, and is summed up by Ryan T. Anderson – a 31-year old fellow at the Heritage foundation – in a fallacious argument published under the title: “Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It.”

In a textbook case of begging the question, Anderson – a protege of Princeton law professor Robert P. George, the intellectual figurehead of secular opposition to gay marriage – builds his entire argument on the very premise he purports to prove: That by its very nature marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Near the beginning of his nearly 7,000-word manifesto, Anderson proclaims: “Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces.”

His definition of marriage thus contrived, the author trots out an endless stream of selectively lifted (and in many cases legitimate) statistics to show how great two-parent families are for kids and how much divorce hurts the economy. He brushes right over the copious research that finds children do just as well with same-sex couples by dismissing social science on same-sex parenting as “a matter of significant ongoing debate” (The primary study he cites to contradict the dominant research was penned by a devout Christian and looked at all cohabiting same-sex relationships – from short-term flings to lifelong monogamous commitments – not marriages.)

But that’s nothing compared to the message he seems to be sending to married people like me. According to Anderson, by choosing to celebrate our immense love and respect for each other with a publicly-recognized contractual bond forged in the presence of our families and friends – Kate and I (and, presumably, the Justice of the Peace who married us) are guilty of “marriage revisionism” because we had the audacity to tie the knot with the full knowledge that we did not plan to have any kids. If you’re not in it to procreate, Anderson implies, you have no business getting a state-sanctioned marriage license.

“Government is not in the business of affirming our love,” he writes, adding: “The idea that romantic-emotional union is all that makes a marriage cannot explain or support the stabilizing norms that make marriage fitting for family life. It can only undermine those norms.”

In his determination to prove that society only has a stake in sanctioning marriages that result in children, Anderson diminishes unions based on something other than child-rearing to the level of puppy love, built on little more than warm and fuzzy feelings, while negating the depth of mature, committed, two-person families and the proven economic, social and civic benefits they generate.

Anderson’s colleagues – including Will Haun, a 26-year-old lawyer and member of the Federalist Society and Ashley Pratte, 23, the executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research and Cornerstone Action – pick up his theme and run with it, in some cases spewing rhetoric that is so naïve it could only have come from someone devoid of any significant life experience. For instance, there’s this little gem, from Caitlin Seery, the 25-year old director of programs for the Love and Fidelity Network: “When you de-link marriage from childbearing, you then have to increase the complexity of that relationship.”

Wait. So my marriage is morecomplex because I don’t have kids? What planet do you live on Caitlin? Research shows that children bring a considerable amount of complexity to a marriage, with 90 percent of couples reporting a decline in marital bliss during the first year of child raising. While the data is inconclusive, there are at least some studies that suggest childless couples are, on average, happier than those with kids. Whether or not that is true, there are at least a half-dozen variables that are more vital to a happy, successful marriage than having children, as this 2007 Pew survey makes clear, while other studies show that simply “staying together for the kids” does them more harm than good in the long run.

Setting aside the initial amusement I felt at being lectured on the intricacies of marriage and childrearing by a group of twenty-somethings, some of whom were probably still living with their parents when I proposed to my wife, I was deeply offended by their willingness to target the more than one-quarter of married Americans without children as part of an ideological campaign to defy the will of a majority of U.S. citizens who now favor legalizing gay marriage.

However revolutionary it may be, gay marriage will not be responsible for redefining marriage as a spiritual, physical and emotional commitment between two people who may or may not choose to have kids; in most developed nations that evolution has already taken place. Contrary to Anderson’s claims, marriage is not simply a publicly sanctioned foundation for people breeding. Civil society sanctions marriage because we recognize its well-documented benefits. For ideological reasons, Anderson and his colleagues choose to focus on one of these benefits. But co-parenting is hardly the only one.

Research shows that married people — regardless of their gender or parental status — are happier, healthier, less stressed, more economically stable, more civically engaged, and are even less likely to commit crimes than their single counterparts. Anyone who says that having more of those kinds of people in our communities isn’t good for America is wearing blinders.

More Environmental Abstracts

2013-03-22T16:52:00.003-04:00

Guide to the thinking man's CPAC

2013-03-15T13:45:00.001-04:00

For the next three days, conservative pundits, patrons and politicians will be gathered outside Washington D.C. for their first major powwow since Mitt Romney lost his bid for the presidency and Karl Rove declared open season on wingnuts.

The Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, has been hosted annually by the American Conservative Union for the past four decades, but it is in these years of reflection following big losses that the gathering takes on special significance.

Back in 2009—with America’s first black President firmly entrenched in the Oval Office—the organizers sensed an opportunity to stoke the fires and called on Rush Limbaugh to man the poker. The shock jock’s reactionary appeal to the “Walmart voter” in his CPAC keynote address resonated across the nation’s (mostly white) heartland, giving rise to the Tea Party and helping swing the House to the GOP in 2010. But the momentum proved shallow and transitory.

So it may seem odd that, four years later—with the Tea Party starting to resemble an unwelcome guest at an establishment dinner party—the ACU has tapped Ted Cruz, the Tea Party poster boy from Texas, to deliver the final remarks on Saturday.

Don’t be too shocked. The New American Right is painfully slow to adapt; and CPAC, once famous for testing the boundaries of partisanship and ideology, has become little more than a GOP pep rally for up-and-coming party cadres and their washed-up predecessors. This explains why CPAC’s organizers prefer to stake the movement’s future on predictable, if uninspiring figures as long as they toe the party line. And Cruz, for all his spit and vinegar, has an impeccable establishment CV.

William F. Buckley famously described conservatism as “standing athwart history and yelling stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so.” The organizers of CPAC 2013 could very well make that their motto. Romney will be speaking again this year, as will Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump (whose invitation to the conference birthed Twitter’s #CPACisDead.) Meanwhile, more forward-thinking GOPers, such Chris Christie and Jon Huntsman, as well as members of the the gay Republican group GOProud, have been sidelined. Even Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s social conservative bona fides weren’t enough to secure him an invite in the wake of his decision to raise taxes to support much-needed infrastructure upgrades in his state.

The argument could be made that everything you need to know about CPAC 2013 is right there, or else buried (not very deeply) in a conference program that could have been recycled for the past four years.

But this year’s CPAC occurs at a pivotal moment for a movement struggling to find balance between its increasingly anachronistic principles and the shifting norms of 21st century America. So, sprinkled between the screenings of pro-life films, homages to Andrew Breitbart and panels on Obama administration “bullying” is a forum on immigration stacked with pro-reform voices and roundtables with titles like:

“A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the Coalition, Bringing Tolerance Out of the Closet.”

“Too Many American Wars? Should We Fight Anywhere and Can We Afford It?”

“Accuracy & Innocence in the Criminal Justice System.”

And scattered among those panels is a handful of sensible voices who recognize that reinvigorating the conservative movement requires a break from self-defeating GOP politics, and an injection of old-school intellectualism into a movement too-long represented by mouth breathers.

Who are these people? Some of them are writing for The American Conservative, like editor-in-chief Daniel McCarthy, who recently opined that while the term conservative “once signified an intellectual tendency with partisan overtones, now it signifies a partisan tendency that would prefer not to have intellectual overtones.”

McCarthy, and some of his TAC colleagues will be at CPAC, participating in a series of panels hosted by the classically conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. But they apparently have little illusion about where they stand at a gathering dominated by small minds and large pocketbooks, where the participants are more interested in mutual back-slapping than intelligent discourse. According to McCarthy:

“CPAC is a place where Republicans are ready for their comeback, where the war on terror is being won (or will be once that comeback takes place), and where Donald Rumsfeld is a defender of the Constitution. Why begrudge a man his fantasy?”

While they don’t always represent my position on issues, I look with hope to voices like McCarthy’s—and Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin and George Nash—to help inaugurate a new era of conservatism that can earn the respect of those of us who many not agree with all of their politics.

In the meantime, the American Conservative Union would do well to remember something else Buckley wrote, in an essay expressing his change of heart on the issue of legalizing marijuana:

“Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.” (emphasis mine)

In a movement whose loudest voices are committed to preserving benefits for the wealthy and fighting tooth and nail against the natural tide of American social progress, a little intelligence could go a long way.

When college is a computer screen

2013-03-07T15:23:00.000-05:00

Two days a week, I grab my notebook, hop on my bike and head off to my Global History class at the University of Virginia; the rest of the week I’m at Yale studying the Old Testament. And later this month I’m registered to sit in on Michael Sandel’s famous lectures on justice – which he has presented for the past two decades at Harvard and are attended by more students than any other class the college offers.

I know what you’re thinking: That’s an awful lot of pedaling. Maybe so; but I should probably mention that the bike is stationary, and the lectures and weekly quizzes are all delivered at my leisure via the Internet.

Welcome to the future of higher education.

At least that’s the future we can expect according to a resounding chorus of commentators, one of the loudest being the columnist Thomas Friedman – who wrote in yesterday’s New York Times that widespread access to information is turning higher learning on its head, and replacing the traditional “sage on a stage” model of professorial omnipotence with a less rigid class structure designed to give students more of a say in how they learn.

On Monday, Friedman joined a group of academics – including the presidents and provosts of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard – at MIT’s Media Lab to discuss the benefits and potential pitfalls of this evolution. The conference, “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” brought together the leading innovators of a new way of teaching whose mission is nothing short of revolutionary: the complete “democratization of education” through the use of so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that stream the best classes from the world’s top universities to millions of students for free.

The idea of putting popular college courses online is not exactly a new one. Ivy Leagues schools such as Yale and Princeton have offered “open coursework” free on the Internet for several years. These are basically filmed hour-long classroom lectures delivered in a YouTube-style format with occasional bonus material — like maps or readings — available for download. The classes are one-way endeavors, there for the taking whenever the mood should strike, and, in my experience, require a considerable amount of discipline to complete. (My Yale Bible class falls into this category).

But MOOCs are quite different. They require students to register and are presented in real time, as the course is actually being taught, with tests, quizzes and homework delivered and assessed using mathematical algorithms. A certificate of completion is available to students who make it through with an acceptable GPA. The concept was born in 2012, when two Stanford computer science professors — Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng — launched Courseera (home of my U of Va. history class) in partnership with the University of Michigan, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Other models soon followed, including edX — founded last May with $30 million from MIT and Harvard — Udacity, and Peer 2 Peer University — a “grassroots open education project” that dispenses with instructors altogether and relies on collaborative learning.

Courseera offered more than 100 courses in fall 2012, and it now has 62 university partners providing free classes through its site. In January, the American Council on Education approved five Courseera classes for college credit. Exams will be proctored via webcam by a company called ProctorU — one of a number of new services that have popped up to support the growing MOOC movement.

While MOOCs would be nowhere without the Internet, these are not simply traditional classes delivered in a new way to a wider audience. Instead, colleges are using the power of interactive communications to change the way schools teach and how students learn. For matriculated students attending class for credit, MOOCs are advancing a concept known as “flipping the classroom,” in which lectures are designed for home viewing and class time is reserved for analysis, labs and group exercises.

Instead of the standard 50-minute lectures most of us remember from undergraduate school, my history professor, Philip Zelikow, follows the Coursera standard of breaking up talks into easily digestible 10-15 minute expositions on specific topics, like “The World of 1830″ and “The Age of Imperialism.” According to Koller, this break from the “one-size fits all model of education” gives students the option of spending more time on topics they know little about, and less time on topics they’ve mastered. (This concept is being mirrored in some “brick and mortar” schools that now allow students to test out of classes once they’ve mastered the subject, instead of forcing them to stick around for an entire semester.) The inverted classroom was named one of the top education-technology trends of 2012 by Inside Higher Ed magazine, and is being modeled in elementary and high schools through platforms like the popular Khan Academy.

It’s a brilliant strategy really. Instead of spending mind numbing hours in stale lecture halls and struggling to understand what you heard later during homework hours, students watch lectures on their own time online and then get the benefits of in-class direction, collaboration and dialogue. But as much as I am a fan of MOOCs, I am not convinced they are right for everyone. For self-motivated post graduates like me who are looking to expand their knowledge while they work out, MOOCs are like intellectual candy. I can’t get enough. But I’m not sure I would want to replace my traditional college experience — which admittedly involved what I consider to be a healthy level of professor worship — with them. MOOCs can also be beneficial to continuing education students who need to bone up on long forgotten skills; but first- and second-year undergrads risk falling behind if they are given too much flexibility (which may explain why MOOC course completion rates are only about 10 percent according to one estimate).

On the other hand, since the 1980s, the cost of a quality college education has grown more than five-fold, and online learning will no-doubt play a vital equalizing role, ensuring that knowledge is not reserved for the highest bidder. And that’s something we should all be excited about.
Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re delving into the Rise of Capitalism this week in Global History, and I definitely don’t want to miss that!

On The Street

2013-03-01T17:25:00.003-05:00

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A Tale of Two Neighborhoods

2013-02-26T14:40:00.004-05:00

Reflections on the education achievement gap

The day after his State of the Union Address, on a stopover in Decatur, Ga., President Obama expanded on a proposal he outlined the night before to make high-quality preschool education available to every single child in America. The plan is certainly not without merit. Repeated studies have shown that the first five years of life are fundamental for developing cognitive and emotional abilities, and early childhood education is a worthy platform for advancing those skills. But the notion that leveling the playing field is enough to ensure equality of opportunity grossly underestimates the systemic, and often invisible forces that set children up for failure before they take their first step.

In a cover story on capitalism and inequality in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, author Jerry Z. Muller quotes scholar Edward Banfield, who wrote: “All education favors the middle- and upper-class child because to be middle- or upper-class is to have qualities that make one particularly educable.” While that statement, like much of Banfield’s work, appears controversial on its face, if we relinquish the temptation to view it critically, as a value judgement, it’s hard not to recognize a grain of truth.

In their 2012 book, “Giving Our Children a Fighting Chance,” Susan B. Neuman – an educator who served as U.S. Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education under George W. Bush – and LaSalle communications professor Donna Celano set out to find out why; and in the process, they uncover some stark realities that undermine the belief that all that is needed for children to succeed is to spread the resources around a little.

After all, they ask: What good is a level playing field if half the participants enter the game missing a limb?

To illustrate their point, the authors and their research assistants split their time between two neighborhoods in Philadelphia. While the residents of Chestnut Hill and West Kensington share a municipal government, a common tax base and a single school district, when it comes to educating their young, they might as well be a world apart. The differences start young, and even when resources are relatively equally distributed, the foundational inequities are a force to be reckoned with.

Neuman and Celano demonstrate this with a trip to local public libraries for a simple comparison of preschool activities. On first inspection, Chestnut Hill Library and Lillian Marrero, at Sixth and Lehigh Ave. (in a neighborhood known as the “Badlands”), appear to have much in common. They are housed in stately buildings with an abundance of reading materials, and each contains a spacious preschool reading area with ample seating for visitors. But the similarities end there. In Chestnut Hill children are almost always accompanied by an adult from whom they receive a great deal of direction, while at Lillian Marrero, kids are typically alone or with an older sibling and, more often than not, they are left to fend for themselves. Not surprisingly, the average child in Chestnut Hill leaves the library with checked-out material, while the kid in Kensington usually leaves empty handed.

The authors call this “The Paradox of Leveling the Field.”

“[I]n equalizing resources, the field is still unequal,” they write. “Material resources, even when they are comparable…represent only one kind of support in creating an environment for reading development.”

Middle-class parents not only receive a different set of cultural prompts regarding proper child rearing, but they have the leisure and financial resources to put them into practice. But the problem is not limited to parenting style, as a simple tally of reading resources in both neighborhoods illustrates. The four available sources of reading material in the Badlands (two of them Rite Aid drugstores) offer just 358 children’s titles. In Chestnut Hill, there are 11 sources of reading material for children (three of them are actual bookstores) housing a total of 16,453 titles.

In light of these inequities, as children get older, a predictable pattern emerges: At Chestnut Hill Library, 93 percent of teenagers read at their age level, while a handful read above it; at Lillian Marrero, just 58 percent are reading where they should, and 42 percent below it.

The deficit of outside reading material and a lack of adult guidance in using what is available deprives young children of the tools they need to compete even when school resources are fairly distributed. Similarly, ample computers in the classroom don’t even begin to make up for the socioeconomic disparities of computer ownership. As Neuman and Celano note, simply understanding how to craft a search engine query and compile and print the results is an increasingly middle-class skill.

Don’t be fooled. The digital divide is alive and well. A third of U.S. households still lack a broadband connection, the majority of them in low-income and rural areas, and less than half of lower-income households contain a computer — well below the national average of 77 percent. Kids from poor families are forced to compete for a 30-minute slot of computer time at the local library, much if which is wasted confronting simple logistical challenges that middle-class kids, who enjoy unlimited access at home, don’t encounter.

Internet access isn’t cheap. We managed to get the bare minimum from Comcast (basic cable, high-speed Internet and no phone) for $65 a month. For families that can’t even afford to heat their homes adequately in the winter, that’s a considerable sacrifice. Fortunately some companies (with a little government prodding) are beginning to address the issue. In authorizing Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal in 2011, the FCC required that the cable giant set up a program to target the digital divide among low-income consumers. Internet Essentials offers broadband access for just $9.95 a month and computers for as little as $150. Also in 2011, the FCC overhauled its Universal Service Fund – an $8.7 billion annual subsidy that was created to expand phone service for low-income consumers – to include Internet access. Other initiatives (such as the One Laptop Per Child program) are making headway at expanding access to computers for children. However, most of these are private initiatives and are concentrated in specific school districts.

The lesson here is that until we confront the fundamental inequities that are fueling the expanding achievement gap, programs that level the playing field in schools can only have so much impact. We need more programs that put books and computers in the hands of low-income kids, and just as important, that offer them the adult guidance and the leisure time they need to learn how to use them outside of the classroom. President Obama’s preschool initiative is an important component of such a strategy, but it’s just a new rung on a ladder that needs work closer to the ground.

On The Street

2013-02-22T17:39:00.004-05:00

Ninth Street Market, Philadelphia, 2013

Can a new Pope save the Church from itself?

2013-02-12T13:20:00.005-05:00

Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI shocked Catholics the world over with news that he is stepping down at the end of the month after less than eight years as CEO of one of the world’s oldest corporations and chief overseer of the largest philanthropic umbrella group known to man.

A former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—with a direct lineage to the Grand Inquisitors of the 16th century—the 85-year-old Pontiff kept his feet firmly planted in Church tradition while occasionally stretching a toe into the waters of modernity. He endorsed Latin-only rites; rejected compromise on social issues like birth control and the status of divorced parishioners; and rebuked American nuns for being too soft.

But he also labored to give Jesus a more human face, granted the first ever Papal television interview, and launched the Holy See into the Internet age with his very own Twitter account. His departure marks the first time in six centuries a Pope has left office still breathing, and it represents a crucial turning point for an organization facing what one Catholic commentator called the “largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history.”

Changing social norms and fallout from a seemingly endless sex abuse scandal have taken their toll. In America, the number of Catholics receiving the sacraments is in steady decline and longtime congregants fed up with the doctrinaire apathy of Church leaders are leaving the pews in droves. (My mother, a graduate of St. Maria Goretti High who never once served us meat on Friday, is much happier now as a novice Episcopalian). In Europe, which doesn’t get the benefit of our Latino immigration, the situation is even worse. Thousands of congregants are dropping from church rolls every year. Even in places like Spain and Ireland—where the vast majority of the population identifies as devoutly Catholic—fewer people than ever attend mass regularly.

Two places where the Church is growing are Asia and Africa, which hosts the world’s largest seminary (in Nigeria) and where the number of practicing Catholics has nearly tripled since the late 1970s. And Catholicism remains an integral part of life across South and Latin America—where 42 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics live. It so happens these are also regions of the world that have never been represented by the Papacy. With Benedict’s resignation that may soon change.

Two African cardinals—Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Ghana and Francis Arinze of Nigeria—and a Philippine, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, have all been named as possible successors to Benedict. Brazilian Cardinals Joao Braz de Aviz and Odilo Pedro Scherer, and Leonardo Sandri of Argentina, are also said to be in the running. A Pope of color would no doubt bring a fresh perspective to an office long dominated by Caucasian representatives of the developed world. But wherever the next Pope comes from, he will need to embrace the realities of the modern world or risk presiding over an institution on the fast track to obsolescence.

“The next pope has to figure out how to preach the gospel in a language understandable in the 21st century,” said Thomas Reese, a Jesuit Priest and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

But it’s more than just a matter of finding the right packaging for Catholic theology. Last year’s presidential election proved that Church leadership continues to have a voice in American politics; but it also showed just how out-of-tune that voice is with the song the rest of us are singing. With that in mind, I’m hoping the 118 members of the conclave charged with electing the next Pope will seek inspiration in the legacy of the reform-minded Pope John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council—which sought to reshape Catholicism to address modern realities like racism, nuclear war and economic justice. The reforms led to a decades-long leftward shift among U.S. bishops that was soundly rejected by conservative traditionalists.

I agree with Catholic commentator Paul Donovan’s suggestion that the next Pontiff convene a Third Vatican Council to create a dialogue with disaffected Catholics and address issues like militarism, poverty and the environment. Writing for CNN, Donovan described what’s at stake if Benedict’s successor sticks with business as usual:

The Catholic Church has continued to march backwards under Pope Benedict, seeming at times to be in a state of perpetual denial, whether the issue be that of child abuse, birth control, homosexuality or the role of women … A new pope who continues the backward approach of recent pontiffs will simply be one who continues to manage the decline of an institution that remains out of date for many in the 21st century.

Of course not everyone agrees that’s the best way to go. Much like the soul-searching going on in the Republican Party, many Catholic traditionalists prefer a smaller Church committed to conservative principles to one that greets the world with open arms. I think that approach does an injustice to the millions of people who Catholicism might still speak to. As a former Catholic (turned Buddhist) with an enduring respect for the Church’s historical and spiritual legacy and a healthy fear of its unwarranted influence on American political life, I’m holding out hope that with a little introspection, the next Pope can replace the cranky old man of Catholicism with a fresh face.

Innovative thinking, not an hatchet, will save the USPS

2013-02-07T12:07:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday, Patrick Donahoe, the Postmaster General of the United States, announced that the U.S. Postal Service will discontinue the delivery of First Class mail on Saturdays as part of an effort to cut costs at the cash-strapped agency. The changes, which are scheduled to take effect in August, will apply only to letters, and will not impact Saturday delivery of packages. The argument could be made that weekend letter delivery is a luxury most of us can live without. And for many people that is probably true; indeed Donahoe cited polls that find most consumers support the move.

But the decision to drop to a five-day service week was not made in a vacuum, and its implications don’t stop with an empty mailbox and an extra (unpaid) day off for letter carriers. It’s a symptom of the dire financial situation of a once storied organization that was founded before the signing of the Declaration of Independence (right here in Philadelphia, by Benjamin Franklin) and inaugurated the very first information super highway. It’s also a harbinger of a downhill slide that, if left unchecked, will spell the end of mail delivery as we know it.

Contrary to popular misconception, the U.S. Postal Service is not a federal agency, at least not in the traditional sense. Since 1971, when President Richard Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act, the USPS has operated as a quasi-private entity that receives no taxpayer support. Get that? Not a single taxpayer dollar flows into its coffers; revenues are generated like any business: through the sale of products and services. And business hasn’t been great. While package delivery is up thanks to a rise in online purchases, the USPS has gotten walloped by e-mail and online bill pay. After remaining relatively steady for much of the past decade, between 2008 and 2011, mail volume dropped 17.7 percent, knocking almost $1 billion off USPS revenues.

But that’s hardly the whole story; and the Postal Service’s financial woes are manufactured at least as much, if not more, than they are organic. A 2006 law signed by President George W. Bush placed a highly unusual financial burden on the organization that turned it from black (2005 profits of $1.4 billion on record revenues) to red in just two years.

While the USPS isn’t officially part of the government, its health benefits are provided through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and its pension fund is managed under the Federal Employees Retirement System, into which it pays a stipend. The 2006 law sought to address perceived mismanagement of this obligation by requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund 80 percent of its retiree health benefits for the next 75 years at a highly accelerated rate that amounts to a total cost to the USPS of more than $5.5 billion each year through 2016. By way of comparison, most private sector companies pre-fund just 30 percent of future retiree health care costs, if they do so at all, and not a single government agency is required to pony up as much as the USPS for future benefits. Basically, the USPS is being asked to pay the future health benefits of employees that don’t even work for it yet.

The USPS has repeatedly asked Congress to reconsider the requirement — which accounted for a whopping $11.1 billion of the Postal Service’s $16 billion in losses in 2012 — but Congress is more keen on cost-cutting measures that will further gut the agency. Like most decisions made in Washington, this will hurt some people more than others.

Times are changing, and most of us rely less than ever on the post office. My wife, who is in charge of such things, pays all of our bills online. On any given day, I throw away more mail than I keep. And the only regular trip I make to the mailbox is to drop off my Netflix returns (a trip that would be unnecessary if Netflix had better streaming options). Indeed, we buy a lot of products online, but at least half of them are delivered by a private service like UPS. The long, slow demise of the Postal Service probably won’t have that big of an impact on me.

One group that will almost certainly be impacted, however, are those living near or below the poverty line. These are the same people who are more likely to have a family member that is incarcerated or serving overseas in the military (circumstances where regular access to inexpensive mail services is essential) and to live in a neighborhood where there are few banks (many low income consumers get their money orders at the post office, which often costs them less than going to a check cashing business). How about e-mail and online bill pay? A Pew report last April found that 20 percent of Americans don’t even use the Internet. The majority are senior citizens, Spanish speakers, people with less than a high school education, and those earning less that $30,000 a year.

Who gets hurt is the Postal Service goes away? The usual suspects: the poor, the elderly and those living in rural areas. Beyond reforming the Postal Service’s pension funding obligation — which can only do so much — there are other ways to help resuscitate the USPS without adversely affecting the people who rely on it the most.

For instance, why not give people like me, who rely less on snail mail, the option of cutting back on service, say to a three-day a week delivery schedule? I’m willing to bet there are even some people who would be willing to give it up entirely. There are also proposals by some lawmakers to cut overhead by co-locating post offices in supermarkets or chain drug stores, and overturning an archaic provision that prohibits the USPS from shipping alcoholic beverages. These are all good proposals; and given the chance, I’m convinced they will prove that a little ingenuity will do more to save the Postal Service than across the board cuts to products and services than many people still rely on.

Environmental Abstracts

2013-02-04T19:09:00.000-05:00

Duende #9

Urban Landacapes

2013-02-03T20:36:00.002-05:00

Where houses used to be, North Philadelphia, 2013

Citizens United and the Politics of Right-to-Work

2013-01-31T17:23:00.000-05:00

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try again. At least, that seems to be the motto of State Rep Daryl Metcalfe, the Butler County Republican who brought us voter ID and made his Tea Party bones by backing proposals to constitutionally ban gay marriage and require all candidates for office in Pennsylvania to prove their blood runs red, white and blue.

Emboldened by recent victories in Michigan and Indiana, last week Metcalfe joined five of his colleagues in the Assembly to reintroduce a bill that would limit the organizing power of unions in the Keystone State. It’s essentially the same bill he’s been trying to advance for the past 14 years, but Metcalfe thinks (rightly, perhaps) that the tides have finally turned in his favor; and he plans to strike while the iron is hot.

Regularly referred to under the catachrestic rubric of “right to work,” laws like Metcalfe’s have nothing to do with guaranteed employment. Instead they are designed to stifle union membership by prohibiting labor and management from enforcing so-called “agency shops”—workplaces that require workers to pay union dues as a prerequisite for employment. That means that new hires can piggyback on contracts and benefits they sacrificed nothing to gain. It also means that employees who are already represented by the union can stop paying their dues and ride on the coattails of those who do—at least until unions cease to exist, which they eventually will under such a regime.

Supporters of RTW claim that laws banning agency shops give an economic boost to the states that pass them, but any evidence that is the case is easily countered by examples where the opposite is true. The years following Oklahoma’s transition to a RTW state in 2001, for instance, witnessed declines in both manufacturing activity and employment; and despite predictions of an incoming surge of out-of-state businesses, the number of companies moving to Oklahoma actually declined.

On the other hand, some liberal commentators exaggerate the negative impact of “right-to-work,” arguing that such laws jeopardize things like overtime pay and workplace safety, both of which are largely regulated by federal law and already apply equally to both union and non-union employees (although evidence exists that unionized shops are a bit better at enforcing them than those with no representation).

Rhetoric aside, however, there is one universal effect of “right-to-work” legislation: Across the board, it has a negative impact on worker compensation. According to a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, workers in states that have banned agency shops make an average of $7,000 less than their counterparts in non-RTW states. The Economic Policy Institute, an opponent of right-to-work, determined that RTW leads to a three percent decrease in average hourly wages.

But, as the architects of these laws are well aware, the real impact of RTW is much more profound than that.

Even as a component of a wider pro-business platform, whatever tiny bounce the GOP may gain from supporting a ban on agency shops is, on its face, hardly worth the fight. Even Gov. Tom Corbett, who is no friend to labor, remains skeptical. After all, labor unions are already on life support in America. According to recently released statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership is at its lowest level since the 1930s. Today just 14.4 million workers—or 11.3 percent of the workforce—are represented. In the private sector it’s just 6.6 percent; and the number of new jobs that are unionized is hardly worth tallying.

By contrast, in 1983, during the height of the Reagan presidency, roughly 20 percent of U.S. workers were union members. And yet in the nearly three decades between then and last year only three states enacted RTW laws. It simply wasn’t a huge priority. So why all the urgency now?

You can thank Citizens United. The same ruling that opened the flood gates for corporate money into political campaigns lifted restrictions on union participation as well. In the past two national election cycles, in 2010 and 2012, organized labor has served as a massive progressive counterweight to the unchecked corporate power unleashed by the Supreme Court. In 2010, the public sector union The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees topped the list of all campaign contributors, spending nearly $90 million in an unsuccessful attempt to secure Democratic congressional supremacy. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, since 1990 organized labor has spent nearly $1 billion to influence elections; and more than 90 percent of union political contributions go to Democrats. (By law, dues-paying union members are not required to support these initiatives, and are only required to contribute their share of representation, collective bargaining and contract administration costs.)

By weakening unions, RTW doesn’t just hurt workers, it hurts progressivism, and anyone who benefits from it (which, by extension, includes anyone who benefits from Democratic policies: i.e. the poor, minorities, women, the disabled, the LGBT community, the environment … shall I keep going?)

Don’t be fooled: Right-to-work isn’t about pro-business Republicans and cigar-chomping capitalists milking a few more dollars from workers during labor negotiations. That’s just an added bonus. The real mission for the GOP is to take down the progressive money machine by emasculating its most prolific organizing base. I’d say that’s a battle worth fighting.