Month: September 2009

Dana Goldstein is against it:

Forty years of psychological research demonstrates that when someone is faced with a complex, creative task — like teaching — money is an ineffective motivational tool, and may even delay progress.

Yglesias counters:

I don’t think the idea is that ineffective teachers are going to suddenly will themselves into becoming great teachers in order to grab some incentive pay. The point is that if you’re employing a bunch of teachers, any of whom might depart in favor of employment elsewhere, you want to make sure that it’s your most effective teachers who are least likely to quit. And one way to do that is to make sure that it’s your most effective teachers—rather than simply your longest-serving ones—who are getting paid the most money.

Among the wreckage he left behind is the botching and bullying of an effective and under-the-radar surveillance of a Jihadist cell in Britain. It took two trials to convict only three men of terrorism – because Cheney intervened:

Dick Cheney, the former US Vice President, nearly destroyed Britain's efforts to bring the airline bomb plotters to justice, police and intelligence experts said today. By ordering the early arrest of Rashid Rauf, the bombers' link man in Pakistan, Washington forced British police to detain the suspects in the UK before all the evidence had been gathered, it was claimed.

I like the view of one of the detectives involved in professional counter-terrorism:

Fearful for the safety of American lives, the US authorities had been getting edgy, seeking reassurance that this was not going to slip through our hands. We moved from having congenial conversations to eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations.

We thought we had managed to persuade them to hold back so we could develop new opportunities and get more evidence to present to the courts. But I was never convinced that they were content with that position. In the end, I strongly suspect that they lost their nerve and had a hand in triggering the arrest in Pakistan.

And that, surely, is what really lies behind Cheney's embrace of torture, lawlessness, murder and violence: he does not have the nerve to defeat Jihadism the way the West has always defeated its enemies. Like many on the far right fringes, he is motivated primarily by fear, and paralyzed by paranoia.

The Economist puts up a global debt clock. Free Exchange pulls out some highlights:

Just having a quick glance, three things stand out to me. The first is that among developed nations, America's level of debt per capita is pretty small, and it remains small relative to other developed nations in 2010 and 2011, according to The Economist's projections. The second is that rising levels of public debt in America are not unique; debt is rising basically everywhere and will continue to do so for the next two years. This reflects that rising debt levels are only partially a result of domestic policy choices, and are also heavily influenced by broader economic conditions and demographic change. And the third thing, the thing that immediately jumps out looking at the map of public debt per capita across countries, is that high debt levels are associated with wealth.

But if you watch Fox News, you'll believe it is all the fault of the commie Muslim fascist from Kenya.

Charlie Cook and others are predicting a sea-change in public mood, with support for the GOP rising because of deficits. This strikes me as an amazing thing. It makes Charlie Brown, the football and Lucy look like the model of intelligent interaction. If you believe in fiscal conservatism, the last place on earth you should look for salvation is the GOP. They have single-handedly destroyed America’s finances since the 1980s, with the sole exception of George H W Bush, who was rejected by his own party precisely because of his fiscal sobriety. The current debt is overwhelmingly inherited by Obama, and it would have been nuts to enter office in the downdraft of the sharp recession and set about cutting spending. Bush had eight years to restrain it and he didn’t. He let it rip. Think of the GOP’s phony concerns about the cost of the current healthcare bill and compare it with the GOP’s prescription drug entitlement that Rove rammed through the Congress when the GOP held total power. The costs then were about eight times as great as the proposed costs now. But that was a Republican measure and so it doesn’t somehow count as evidence of fiscal irresponsibility. But Nancy Pelosi only has to raise an eye-brow and the alarms go off. Somehow – thanks in part to dishonest partisan hacks like Glenn Reynolds and Sean Hannity – the Bush-Cheney debt is all Obama’s fault and you need to get Republicans back to fix it. A commenter on Bruce Bartlett’s Forbes column has the best response to that:

The last Republican who left the office of the presidency with the federal public debt as a percentage of GDP less than when he entered was Richard Nixon (FY 1975). The last Republican who left the office of the presidency with a federal deficit less than 2.7% of GDP was Dwight Eisenhower (FY 1961). Since WW II no Democratic president has ever left office with the federal public debt as a percentage of GDP more than when he entered. And since WW II no Democratic president has ever left office with a federal deficit more than 2.6% of GDP.

We already have at least one party of fiscal responsibility. It’s called the Democratic Party.

Which, of course, is still a problem. But nothing like the fiscal lunacy of the GOP.

Bruce Bartlett, one of the very few intellectually honest conservatives – barred, of course, from the movement organs – is now blogging at Capital Gains And Games. It's an encouraging new group-blog. Check out Andrew Samwick on Krugman.

Ah, the intertubes. A reader has a free association and Alex Massie runs with it:

Please note: I am not suggesting that the former Vice-President was a fascist or even the kind of would-be fascist fond of parading around in footer bags making a frightul ass of himself. Nonetheless …

It all has something to do with Hitch and Wodehouse.

The latest from Iran:

Iranian security forces Tuesday cracked down on the opposition's campaign to highlight torture and abuse of prisoners in the country's post-election crisis, shutting down offices of pro-reform leaders and arresting five of their aides in a startling series of raids…  The arrests suggested that authorities aim to crush the campaign led by Mousavi and Karroubi to bring to light alleged torture and rapes of protesters who were detained in the heavy crackdown against the opposition that followed the disputed June presidential election. The abuse allegations have been deeply embarrassing for the Iranian government and the clerical leadership, amid reports that several detainees were tortured to death. Karroubi in particular has been vocal in demanding an official investigation into the allegations.

I'm still grappling with the fact that Iran's regime is more embarrassed by allegations of torture than the last American administration. That's what Cheney did to the West.

(Photo: Olivier Laban-Mattei/Getty.)

A reader writes:

My son, who was not circumcised at birth had to undergo the procedure as a medical necessity at the age of two. He was anaesthetized, etc, and we were sent home from hospital with painkillers, ointments and instructions. Nonetheless, I still get chills at the memory of him hysterically screaming out "No, Daddy. No. No. No. Don't. Don't. Don't!" while I had to physically pin him down to change the dressing in the days afterwards. Maybe it was my inexperience at parenting. Clearly the painkillers we were initially provided weren't doing the job (fortunately the doctor provided a better solution when we complained). All I know is it reduced me to tears.

I believe that to give religions a pass on this procedure because it's a "core conviction" is to duck the issue like the New York Times. Please call it what it is and be consistent. It's evidence that some religious beliefs are just not compatible with what we know about the world.

The logic of my readers is pretty overwhelming; and my position is obviously a defensive and largely pragmatic one.

It seems to me that parents have every right to bring their children up in a religion without asking the child's consent because at some point the child will be an adult and be able to assess the faith for himself. But no man can get part of his body back, a part that was surgically removed from him without his consent as an infant. It is not as barbaric as female genital mutilation – but it does change a penis for ever and cover its most sensitive parts with scar tissue. I'm all for people deciding to do this for themselves, if that's what they want. But forcing people into mandatory permanent mutilation?

The reason I don't follow this to its logical conclusion is that I just cannot imagine trying to enforce a total legal ban on it given the religious outrage among Muslims and Jews it might provoke. And I do make exceptions for religious liberty that I don't for other issues, because I believe very deeply in the right of people to figure out their ultimate purpose in life without the intervention of the state. So I restrict myself to mere venting about what seems to me to be an irrational and barbaric relic.

Second graders watch as President Obama delivers a back-to-school address to school children on September 8, 2009 in Denver, Colorado. Administrators at the Park Hill public school gave parents the option of pulling their children from class or allowing them to watch the live Presidential broadcast. Only a few parents chose to keep their kids out of class. In the speech the President urged children to work hard and stay in school. By John Moore/Getty Images.