I’ve admitted before that I find healthcare to be an eye-glazing issue — especially in Rhode Island. Sometimes it seems reasonable to wonder whether that’s an effect that the industry actively encourages. As William Gamble’s analysis suggests (to my mind, anyway), Blue Cross of Rhode Island could hardly have been better designed for corruption if that had been the intention all along:
Both the law and the market provide six methods to stop agents from taking anything that is not nailed down. They are: 1) business failure, 2) the market for corporate control, 3) managerial duties required by law, 4) direct managerial financial incentives, 5) corporate-governance oversight, and 6) shareholder empowerment. None of these applies to Blue Cross.
His solution?
Try selling it. It must be worth something. Why does Rhode Island, a small state with a small insurance pool, need a separate Blue Cross? Why not merge it with Massachusetts Blue Cross? Why not a New England Blue Cross — a company large enough to negotiate with all providers?
I’ve noticed, here and there around my life, that smaller groups — a school system, a town government, a small office in a limited market — are often infested with backstabbing and advantage-taking out of proportion to their actual significance. The temptation of becoming a small pond big fish seems apt to drive people mad. (Perhaps because a certain sort of person can become such a creature although he wouldn’t survive in a broader pool.) But as anybody who becomes addicted to the Flash game Fishy! will learn, ambition quickly becomes its own undoing in an enclosed ecosystem, and unfortunately, the individual isn’t likely to be the only one undone.
[Open full post]Over at National Review Online, John J. Miller previews the 2006 Senate races. With all due respect to the conservative mothership, he gets Rhode Island completely wrong.
Lincoln Chafee, the sort-of Republican, isn’t well liked by many of his GOP colleagues because they worry he’ll bolt the party if it means he can stay in the majority. He may face a primary, but he’ll probably win. Democrats will have a hard time coming up with a candidate who can beat him. Congressman Patrick Kennedy would be an interesting choice, but he appears content in the House.
First, obviously the name “Steve Laffey” has not trickled up to the national level yet. He would certainly be a strong challenger against Chafee in a Republican primary. Second, I think that Miller underestimates the potential of a Kennedy run. Kennedy can present himself as more responsible than Chafee on national security issues (he voted in favor of the Iraq war). Enough Republicans may have grown tired enough of Chafee to leave that part of the ballot blank on election day, especially if the Republicans already have a solid 54-or-more member majority in the Senate. [Open full post]
Having been struggling for an interesting way to frame this, I was much relieved to read Marc’s recent post about demographics and Republican states’ receiving more government aid while (ostensibly) voting against Big Government. Blogger Sensible Mom has explored the data in a bit more depth (the bracketed comment is hers):
But let’s focus on the election map by county. Those states with large cities, Illinois, New York and California, benefit from the corporate taxes payed by the businesses in those cities. In addition, in many of the blue states, there are large areas of red. Take a look at Illinois and California. One of the collar counties of Chicago, DuPage County, is wealthy. I would like to see the average tax bill per household in DuPage compared to the average in the city of Chicago [I’m going to try to find this data]. I bet it is higher in DuPage. …
Next I looked at Illinois by county. I picked one blue county, Cook (includes Chicago), and three red counties, Lake, DuPage and Will. The US Census Bureau publishes the Consolidated Federal Funds Report by county. When that information is divided by the population in each county it shows that the blue counties receive considerably more federal funds on average than the red counties.
Of course, Illinois might be different than, say, Massachusetts, but some of the considerations are significant. First, we can’t forget the disproportion of corporate taxes when assessing how much the Blue States “give.” Second, it is apparently (and logically) the case that some Blue States concentrate the money that the feds give back to them in a limited number of Democrat-controlled areas.
So here’s the (intentionally biased) question: Do the Republican poor vote principle while the Democrat poor vote self-interest? I don’t have the time, right now, to dig into this as deeply as the turf appears to allow, but at initial glance, it would seem that living amid the Coastal Elite has a deleterious effect on one’s character.
(Via Lane Core)
I’d encourage anyone interested in the question as to “why we vote the way we do” to read this article by Patrick Cox about the seeming correlation between political ideology and demography. In it, he also tackles the apparent conundrum of those who most benefit from government spending (so-called Red States) voting against those who would seem to favor an increase in said spending (the Democrats). This is something that the pundit Lawrence O’Donnell (one of the proponents of Blue State Secession, btw) had been pontificating about recently. (O’Donnell said “Ninety percent of the red states are welfare-client states of the federal government.”) According to this meme, it was rural voters, who receive more federal dollars than do urban voters, who are responsible for putting President Bush back in the White House. (I guess we are all supposed to revel in the irony of it all.)
Cox offers some insight into why this ungratefulness, as O’Donnell seems to imply, on the part of the Red States is not really hard to figure out. First, because the cost of living is higher in urban areas, they have a higher concentration of higher wage earners and generate higher revenue than do rural areas with lower cost of living requirements and commensurate wages. As such, more of the urban dollars get redistributed. To this I would add that the gulf between the very wealthy and the very poor is wider in the cities. As such, one group votes its interests (the poor) and the other (the rich) votes either out of guilt or because it can afford to pay for social welfare programs (or, with good tax people, can avoid taxed altogether anyway!). Cox’s second point is that, with less concentrated populations, rural states spend more money delivering services (like the mail) to fewer people over larger areas. Finally, Cox believes that it is more likely that the voters in rural states are continually being “bought off” by “redistributionists” so that they will approve of other government programs.
While looking deeper for a link between demography and ideology, Cox closes the piece with the following:
The statistician’s perennial caveat is that “correlation is not causation.” but there is little doubt that there is connection, largely unexplained, between ideology and demography. Depressingly deterministic as it is, this correlation, if it continues, may mean that future elections will be decided by immigration patterns, reproductive rates and technologies that allow more businesses and workers to locate in suburban and rural locations.
In one sense, Cox has simply noticed a characteristic that has existed in this country almost since its founding. The Town/Country, Rural/Urban divide has been much debated. While Cox links demography to ideology, it is important to note that “demographies” can change in their ideological preferences, or, at the least, in their political preferences. (The change in the south from solid Democrat to solid Republican is an example of the latter. However, it can be argued that the ideology of the South has not necessarily changed as much as the vehicle that best expresses that ideology of the polity, a given political party, has indeed changed.)
Demography is a term that covers a wide array of other terms. These include words like geography, race or religion, and all carry certain characteristics or connotations that may be much more indicative, or even determinative, of ideology. Importantly, rare is the case where only one of these factors is determinative and usually it is a combination of these characteristics that goes into forming an ideology. As such, the ability of “demography” to serve as a conceptual catch-all makes it attractive, especially to one such as Cox who appears determined to find that one Big Idea as to why we vote the way we do.
The work of historians such as Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood and Joyce Appleby has shown that, while certain ideologies have been predominant at certain periods in our history, they inevitably give way to other, more persuasive concepts. Though traces of the ideologies of the 17th Century Radical Whigs, or the Civic Humanists or the Jeffersonian Liberals can still be found, no single ideology has dominated for an extended period of time among the general population.
Cox seems to have consigned himself to having concluded that his view is hopelessly deterministic, which harkens back to yet another Big Idea. History is full of many attempts by those who have been tempted to find a single word or concept to describe both the process of history and the future of the world. The funny thing is, just when we think we have it all figured out, the rules change. Just ask Karl Marx or Francis Fukuyama.
[Open full post]Mackubin Thomas Owens, a professor at the War College in Newport, has done a little preliminary strategic brainstorming in the event that the Blue States try to secede:
To begin with, where would the blue-state secessionists get the military force they would need to vindicate their action? After all, to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, principles, no matter how noble, are mere wind without the sword. Most U.S. servicemen come from the red states, or from the red counties of the blue states. The blue states have made it next to impossible for their citizens to own firearms, so they can’t count on “a people, numerous and armed” to vindicate their secession.
Although I imagine Blue State liberals, in their secession fantasies, imagine themselves being set free by their legions of lawyers, Owens’s piece is certainly worth a read for the laugh. A Red v. Blue war would be a bit like when the littlest brother gets really, really mad at the biggest.
[Open full post]Just to add to the observations that have been touched on here and there at Anchor Rising, the 2005 Catholic Almanac has revealed that 9 of the 10 most Catholic states sent their Electoral Votes to John Kerry, with only Lousianna (#10 overall) in the Bush column. Rhode Island, at 63.5% of its population, is the nation’s most Catholic state.
[Open full post]Especially without being in that state, it’d be difficult to guess the political dynamics of a probable proposal in the Connecticut legislature:
On Election Day, voters in 11 states approved constitutional bans on gay marriage. But when the Connecticut legislature meets in January, the state may buck the national trend.
Democrats hold strong majorities in both houses of the legislature. The party’s leaders favor some sort of civil unions which would grant same-sex couples many of the same rights as married heterosexual couples.
Rep. Robert Godfrey, D-Danbury, and other lawmakers say it is almost inevitable that a gay union measure will become law in the 2005 session of General Assembly. …
… The judicial branch is not forcing the hand of Connecticut’s legislature.
At least not yet.
However, earlier this year, seven same-sex couples filed suit to force Connecticut to legalize gay marriage. Some preliminary hearings have been held on the case, which is pending in New Haven Superior Court. The case is expected to take at least two years to decide; most observers expect it to end up before the state Supreme Court.
From now until one side or the other wins at the national level (or both sides admit stalemate, which isn’t likely), every governing body in the country is going to face a variety of concerns: the separate powers of the branches, events in other states, struggles at the federal level, and (oh yeah) constituents’ wishes. Gay rights activists are going to continue with their through-the-courtroom strategy. The mainstream media everywhere, but particularly in the Northeast, is going to accelerate its advocacy. Supporters of traditional marriage will continue to argue that the issue is going to change the Constitution one way or another.
Various states will respond to the forces in different ways, and the federal debate will be shaped accordingly. We can only wait and see what happens, but I’d guess we’ll be seeing it happen in Rhode Island relatively soon.
PROEM:
Since this is my first post on same-sex marriage on this blog, it is probably relevant to note that I’ve already written extensively on the topic.
Barbara Gordon of Pawtucket is “distressed” at various efforts to write into the law explicitly what, until recently, everybody thought to be there by definition:
I believe it is immoral to discriminate against any minority group solely because they differ from the norm and make some of us uncomfortable. I believe it is un-American to deny civil rights to certain citizens not because of any crime, but just because of who they are and whom they love. I cherish the U.S. Constitution and am concerned when those who would have their religious beliefs dictate the laws that affect us all seek to undermine the constitutional separation of church and state. …
Whom another person wishes to love, comfort, and honor threatens none of us; codifying discrimination in anti-gay marriage laws or amendments harms us all.
If the law — as it already exists — is clarified, you see, then those who wish to change it will find it more difficult to convince a judge to declare that marriage is something other than what the language means it is. I’ve come to think that this is less a conscious stratagem than a flaw in reasoning.
Mrs. Gordon might be edified to learn that I agree that civil rights oughtn’t be denied “just because” of whom somebody loves, and that I’m also wary of people who rely entirely on irrational beliefs to dictate laws. I suspect she’ll be a bit less enthusiastic about my suggestion that her irrational beliefs are a case in point.
I’ve given Rhode Island’s marriage laws a pretty thorough look, and I see not a word about “love.” In fact, the words that Gordon uses to describe marriage are conspicuously religious-sounding, and while civil officiants may use them as boilerplate, they aren’t required to do so by law. This isn’t just a cute debater’s point, because it underlies the two critical concepts in her argument: “civil rights” and “discrimination.”
At Gordon’s urging, I found and read Charles Bakst’s November 11 column on the topic. Therein, Providence Mayor David Cicilline takes the same approach as Mrs. Gordon (and most other supporters of same-sex marriage). Petitio principii, he embeds his conclusions in his assumptions:
You cannot on the one hand say ‘I respect people’ and ‘I agree with tolerance’ and at the same time argue for discriminating against the same group of people. And, frankly, gays and lesbians aren’t asking to be ‘tolerated.’ We’re asking to be valued and we’re asking for the same rights and responsibilities that everyone else has. You ‘tolerate’ an annoying noise in a car.
But is the equivalence of same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage a civil right? Is refusing to recognize same-sex marriages invidious discrimination? It is only so if, as the innovation’s proponents contend, society’s interest in recognizing marriages in the first place has nothing to do with the spouses’ being of opposite sex. For “discrimination” to deserve the revulsion that the word too often sparks even in its most neutral sense, two groups must be similarly situated. It is not invidious discrimination, for example, for a carpenter to be denied a tax break intended for teaching supplies. That unjust discrimination is so often assumed in the opening salvos of the same-sex marriage discussion ought to be cause for concern.
To declare so haughtily that traditional marriage laws violate the rights of homosexuals, one must believe that there are no differences between men and women that are relevant to marriage. If marriage is not centrally about gender, then it is not centrally about the most obvious thing that men and women can only do together: create children. And if marriage is not about procreation, then there’s no reason it has to be about sex. And if it isn’t about sex, then intimate love — as opposed to other forms of mutual interest or affection — needn’t be definitive. Marriage, in other words, becomes a partnership in the most bland, contractual sense of that word.
That outcome has proven all but inconceivable to many who support same-sex marriage (at least those whom we trust about their intentions). They take for granted that the emotional culture of marriage is written in firm ground that they imagine at the core of our social being. As they, themselves, prove that ground is not as firm as it might seem. Even if it were, however, we would still have to keep in mind that the law does not require married couples to act married, or even to proclaim that they are. Any stigma associated with same-sex marriages of convenience would have no readily visible identification on which to accrue and would therefore quickly slip away.
I can only muse that those who are most willing to force radical changes on our culture are also the most naive about the ways in which the culture can change. And I can only be distressed that too many seem to believe that same-sex marriage would represent no change at all.
Reason 1: Why Pardoning Taricani is the Right Thing.
Reason 2: Why the Right Thing is Consistent with the President’s Agenda.
Institutionally, American democracy has forgotten something — all three branches of government are charged with defending the rights of the individual. Somewhere that idea was lost, replaced by the idea that the court system alone was charged with protecting individual liberty, and the other branches of government, and the general population, were expected to obey judges’ orders without question (unless another judge overturned an order.)
That flaw, of course, is that the people who make up the judiciary branch are just as human and fallible as the people who make up the other branches. They can make mistakes and overstep their authority — for what they think are the right reasons — just like the other branches can. And that is why there are checks built into the system that limit the power of judges.
In the Jim Taricani Case, President Bush has an opportunity to step forward and remind the nation of the fact that the court system is not more equal than others when it comes to protecting individual freedom; the executive is as responsible for protecting rights as are the courts. The President has the authority — and the duty — to reverse actions of the judicial branch that would improperly deny an individual’s freedom.
I attended a meeting last night at my local elementary school in which data was presented detailing where the school stood with regards to standardized testing for school accountability as mandated by the State and Federal governments. While I may find the specific numbers for my children’s school more germane, I realize that there is more general interest in the statewide numbers. These have yet to be publicized, so I guess you could call this a bit of a scoop. (For a more comprehensive breakdown, please go to the Ocean State Blogger where some of the analysis below has been repeated).
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, all students must meet the achievement standards by 2014. The test results I have are only for 4th graders statewide and cover Math and English Language Arts (ELA). There is an established standard that all students are supposed to meet. The levels of achievement are measured against that standard for each student and then the percentage of students meeting that standard are calculated. In total, 89% achieved the overall standard for READING, 81% achieved the overall standard for WRITING, and 56% achieved the overall standard for MATH. (There are further gradations of achievement, and, again, if you’re interested, go to my OSB site).
A closer look at the internals reveal specific problem areas. Obviously, progress needs to be made in Math, particularly in the areas of Problem Solving and Concepts.
Overall, the ELA numbers are better, but it seems as if there is a deficiency in the area of Writing Conventions and Reading Analysis. The latter is not surprising, giving the suspicion we all have regarding the short attention spans of today’s video-centric kids. The deficit in Writing Conventions is also not entirely surprising, as teaching and learning the mechanics of writing (remember diagramming sentences?) is generally not classified as “fun.” Besides, I suspect that, as we are just coming off of a decade in which it was OK for 2+2 to = 5, strict adherence to punctuation and sentence structure have been subordinated to teaching a child how to better express their thoughts and feelings in writing. Content over structure, if you will. The recognition that writing conventions are important will hopefully remind that it’s not just the content but also the structure of what was written that earns serious consideration of one’s work. (This never changes, content is nothing in the world of scholarly publication if you can’t get the format correct).
Overall, it seems as if progress is being made, and that the education establishment is taking this seriously. However, they can’t do it alone and it is up to us as parents to make sure that our kids are putting the effort into their schoolwork and that we encourage them along the way. Remember, the responsibility for educating our children is not only held by our children’s teachers. The lessons learned behind the school walls are forgotten unless they are reaffirmed at home. The teachers need our help, our encouragement and our support. It may sound hokey, but the school my kids attend have a little acronym that encapsulates what parents, teachers, kids, and the community need to do. They need to be a T.E.A.M. (Together Everyone Achieves More).
I have written in the past about my disagreement with teachers when it comes to contracts and such. I will continue to do so. However, I will give them all the support they need to educate my child to the best of their ability. We all need to be able to separate the political from the educational, at least on a personal basis. After all, it really is about the kids, not about the desire to extract every penny from the taxpayers and the reciprocal resentment derived from such demands.
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