Schools

Time to talk about schools. Stossel starts about my making it clear that American students are stupid. On this point, I can only agree with him. Most American schools are awful. Schools have been unaccountable and stagnant for hundreds of years, despite obvious changes in the real world. He also says that tenure is a tool that is not worth its while. I agree- and my mother is a school social worker!

Of course, Stossel then has to go and talk about private schools. Apparently, public money going to religious schools does not violate the separation of church and state. This makes no sense. He also says that private schools are better than public schools. As the recent Department of Education study pointed out, this is not true.

There are many ways to improve our schools. First and foremost, we need to start teaching useful things. If students are learning abstract concepts such as math and science that they will never need in life, they have no incentive to stay in school. I wrote about this last year at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/4/21544/1628. We can also make schools more like BCA, customized to fit the needs of the student. In other words, this means public school choice. By encouraging students to pick schools, the educators will be required to market themselves and improve themselves in order to stay in business. It is government competition, which is great for success.

The Wall Street Journal

I've been getting the WSJ so I can get the business news for work. Whenever I see articles talking about "so-called greenhouse gases" and the like, I know I'm reading a conservative paper. But there was an editorial this morning that just took the cake for me. Just as background, the American Bar Assocation released a report a few weeks ago by a bipartisan panel that said that presidential signing statements were unconstitutional and a grave threat to democracy. The WSJ promptly ran an editorial saying that the ABA was corrupt and had an excessive power over confirmation hearings. Today, they ran a follow-up piece.

In a letter in today's Wall Street Journal, American Bar Association President Michael Greco objects to our calling his outfit a liberal interest group that should lose its special role in vetting federal judicial nominees. Well, then what are we to make of the ABA's report last week accusing President Bush of abusing his power by explaining how he interprets the bills he signs into law?

In its new "study," the ABA claims that Presidential "signing statements" are "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system" and urges Congress to pass a law giving itself the power to challenge them in court. It then advances a theory under which the President has no authority to judge for himself the Constitutionality of the various laws he signs. This is absurd on its face given that the President takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," thus obliging him to form an independent opinion of what this requires.

Let's go back to what we were all taught in 1st grade.
The Congress makes the laws, the Judiciary interprets the laws, and the Executive enforces the laws. Unless the Judiciary and the Executive merged without me knowing, that's Unconstitutional.

As the ABA study acknowledges, Presidential "signing statements" or their equivalent go back to the early days of the republic. James Monroe signed a bill mandating a reduction in the size of the army but challenged its prescriptions for selecting military officers--asserting the latter was a Presidential duty.

Or consider President Clinton's signing statement on the Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2000. It took issue with "a number of provisions . . . regarding the conduct of foreign affairs that raise serious constitutional concerns"--such as limiting his ability to conduct negotiations on a climate change treaty. "Wherever possible," Mr. Clinton said, "I will construe these provisions to be consistent with my constitutional prerogatives." But "where such a construction is not possible, I will treat them as not interfering with those prerogatives and responsibilities."

Doesn't mean it's right, even if Clinton did it.

All of which would appear to have also made Mr. Clinton a Constitutional scofflaw, according to the ABA. The lawyers' lobby says the Constitution requires the President to "approve or disapprove each bill in its entirety"--with no room to interpret what is often ambiguous legislative language that will typically be disputed in court no matter how the executive branch implements it. Yet only now, when antiwar partisans are trying to embarrass the Bush Administration, does the ABA speak up.

See, it will be in court anyway. Thus we don't need signing statements. And I have no clue what the war has to do with this.

The political agenda of the ABA report is apparent from page one, which quotes from a newspaper report that "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office." Only in a footnote does it acknowledge the article is wrong--Mr. Bush hasn't signed anywhere near 750 laws--and that what's at issue are various provisions of complicated acts of Congress.

Wow, I didn't know Congress was that inefficient that they've passed less than 750 laws in 6 years...

It is hardly surprising that more conflicts over executive and Congressional powers are arising now, in wartime. The essence of the separation of powers is that each of the three branches has core duties that it is obliged to assert and defend, and wars require executive energy. The Founders certainly did not intend the federal courts to be the sole or ultimate arbiter of constitutionality--and therefore all government policy--as the ABA suggests.

Of course not. They said that the Congress had to pass only Constitutional laws, but if they don't it's the Judiciary's job to decide.

The ABA also has a hard time understanding political balance. It apparently thinks its 10-person task force was fair because it included three "conservatives." But all three are known critics of the Bush Administration's interpretation of executive power, and two of them--Bruce Fein and William Sessions--have been consistently vocal about it. Meanwhile, the ABA excluded such Democrats as former head of the Clinton Administration's Office of Legal Counsel Walter Dellinger, who wrote a 1993 memo saying the President has an obligation to disregard unconstitutional laws.

We'd think even such dedicated liberals as Yale Professor Harold Koh would be embarrassed about the shoddy scholarship of the paper they've signed their names to. It attributes Mr. Bush's alleged misdeeds to a theory known as the "unitary executive," according to which all executive branch agencies are to be fully responsive to the wishes of the President. But what's really at issue is the totality of executive branch power under Article II of the Constitution, not the manner in which it is wielded.

Think about what this means. The IRS is an agency in the executive branch. Therefore, Bush can set tax rates. The EPA? So long environmental rules.

Finally, there's Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, who has introduced legislation similar to what the ABA is demanding. Having Congress ask the courts to usurp Presidential powers itself violates the Constitution as we read it--and it's also a recipe for governmental paralysis. It's a shame Mr. Specter isn't applying more of his energy instead to confirming Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.

apparently the WSJ feels that the "Advice and Consent of the Senate" is the equivalent of rubber-stamping any judicial nominee. I wonder how they would feel if this was a Democratic president.

The ABA report on Presidential signing statements is a transparent political exercise, and the lawyers should at least have the nerve to defend it as such, rather than pretend they are some neutral body. As for Senator Specter, his proposal is an attempt to tip the balance of federal power toward Congress and the courts. Presidents have an obligation to fulfill their duty to interpret legislation in a manner consistent with the Constitution--although we do wish Mr. Bush would use those powers more often to wield the veto pen.

Stupid Stossel

The entry name comes from the chapter I just started, called Stupid Schools. I couldn’t help but change the wording a little bit.

Well, the shoveling just keeps on continuing. I’ve been folding down the corners of pages that I wanted to discuss, and I ended up flagging half the book.

My next reading session started with a section on the ridiculousness of government today. On this point, I have to agree with Stossel, on most points. I tend to disagree with comments such as, “Government hurts the needy by vomiting the public’s money everywhere”. While government certainly has waste, in general the system helps to distribute wealth and help those who need it.

Then we get into the good stuff. Stossel talks about ‘dumb laws’ that exist solely to satisfy the government’s apparent insatiable desire to control its citizens. One of these was the town of Friendship Heights, MD, where the mayor banned smoking in outdoor public areas. According to Stossel, “only the flimsiest of data suggests secondhand smoke hurts people” and “the idea that outdoor cigarette smoke is a meaningful health risk is silly”. Therefore, I suppose that Stossel feels that the surgeon general, numerous other doctors, and even Altria are lying. I also suppose that Stossel has never been in an outdoor location near someone smoking. If this is true, he has excellent luck.

But what made me almost start laughing on the bus home from New York was this: “The mayor seemed very sincere, and the citizens of Friendship Heights felt protected by his concern. However, shortly after I interviewed him, he was caught touching a fourteen-year-old boy’s genitals in a restroom at Washington National Cathedral.” Apparently, Stossel has an inane desire to lose even more credibility by mentioning an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand- yet another logical fallacy.

I’ll get to the schools issue in my next post.

My own shovel

I am reading the book Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity; Get Out the Shovel- Why Everything You Know Is Wrong by John Stossel, an investigative reporter for ABC News’ 20-20 show. Before I started reading, I did some research on him and his news positions. He is a ‘consumer advocate’, albeit one who dislikes government. The overarching theme of the book seems to be that regulation causes tremendous problems. Unfortunately, his arguments are contradictory and misconstrued, and contain numerous logical fallacies.

In general, Stossel first lists the ‘myth’, and then gives his version of the ‘truth’. One of the first topics that he tackles is the minimum wage. The myth is that “A higher minimum wage helps workers”, while the truth is apparently that ‘A higher minimum wage helps some workers, but hurts more”. Stossel uses the example of a pizza shop in Santa Monica, California, to show why minimum wage hikes are bad policy. The council of the town passed a law mandating a $12.25 an hour minimum wage. Apparently, one store owner did not like that. Stossel completely ignores the stories of several states that increased the minimum wage and did not see any change in their employment situations. The book continually makes its point through small examples, be it of one town, judge, or person. That doesn’t prove anything.

Another myth that Stossel includes is that “In sex, size doesn’t matter to women” while the truth is that “Size matters”. Here, Stossel cites two scientists that say that penis size does matter to women. Yet he mentions several other studies (that are much more respected) that state the opposite. The book frequently seems unsure of what its actual point is.

Glancing through the rest of the book, I see ideas such as: vouchers don’t violate the separation of church and state, boys and girls need separate educations, and a FOUR-PAGE diagram on teacher tenure. I look forward to digging with my own shovel.

Picture

I was as confused as many other people were when I saw the picture. What, exactly, were we supposed to be getting out of this photo? It looked like a picture of a beach taken through an archway and a window.

Then I looked at the larger picture (literally), and it became clear. There is a thin vertical white line running down the side of the painting, next to the easel. The small depth of the line shows that the painting on the easel is jutting up very close to the ocean, or the larger painting of the ocean in the archway.

This picture shows the limits and problems of perception, one of the Ways of Knowing. Each person can perceive things differently, and that problem causes one of the main problems of knowledge.

Alexander Rosenberg

Alexander Rosenberg claims that philosophy answers only the questions that cannot be answered by science. Putting aside the fact that many people consider philosophy to be a science, this claim is incorrect according to the Areas of Knowledge, which includes areas such as the natural and human sciences. Science can answer many questions relating to philosophy, and philosophy can answer many questions relating to science. Although philosophy and science can be used to explore each other, Rosenberg is partially correct in that the two areas frequently stay apart.

TOK, being a philosophy class, talks about the problems with knowledge. Surely, there are some problems with science, especially due to experimental error and definitive ‘proofs’. The Ways of Knowing can also play a part in the problems of knowledge, since things like perception difficulties and communication barriers can prevent the complete understanding of information. In this way, philosophy does play a part in explaining topics relating to the ‘sciences’.

Science, at least at the current time, cannot offer explanations for everything. No experiment can tell you precisely why I am typing these exact words at this exact time. It is thus the role of philosophy to fill in those blanks.

So in conclusion, Rosenberg is partially right. Science can answer many questions that philosophy cannot, and philosophy attempts to answer many questions that science cannot. It would seem that the reverse of Rosenberg’s statement is also true, and that science only answers the questions that cannot be answered by philosophy.

War on Christmas

This is a fantastic op-ed in USA Today on the non-existent War on Christmas.

First Post

This is the first post!