Month: July 2010

A Thousand Cuts

by Patrick Appel

Veronique de Rugy argues that cutting spending is not only possible and necessary but that it can be politically expedient:

Cutting public spending can seem challenging. Entitlement spending increases automatically in a recession and as the population ages. Meanwhile, military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ongoing threat of terrorism all help lawmakers claim that those parts of the budget are off limits. Lawmakers tend to be wary of spending reductions in general, as they believe their political survival rests on rewarding their supporters with jobs or subsidies. Yet there is evidence that Congress can cut spending—and cut it by a lot.

The spending debate usually focuses on Congress and the President, but there is also an incentive problem at lower levels of government. During the presidential debates, Obama talked about taking a scalpel rather than a hatchet to spending. I'd rather hand out thousands of scalpels to the federal bureaucracy.

The problem with cutting spending at the highest levels is much waste is hard to identify. No matter how deft Obama's scalpel is, it's inconceivable he will be better able to identify deadwood than the federal workers assigned to these projects. But these workers have no reason to do a cost-benefit analysis; it's not their money, if the department doesn't spend its full budget the budget might get clipped the next year, there is no reward for coming in under budget, and it's a political liability to cut corners. Giving departments bonuses for slashing spending or allowing unused funds to roll-over into the next year's budget would begin to fix this incentive problem. Even if these steps didn't cut the deficit significantly, it would result in a more efficient government, provided you don't make the incentives so attractive that government workers begin cutting worthwhile services and projects.

The Evolutionary Case For Monogamy? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I think Christopher Ryan leaves out part of the picture by suggesting that genetics can be the only source for evolutionary selection in the Darwinian sense.  This is basically an extension of the nature/nurture debate.  Just like the evolution of our genes can determine who we are and how we behave, so too can the evolution of cultural norms within a given society.  Societies that perpetuate ideas and norms that are beneficial to quality of life in the long run may prove more successful than societies that do not.  It's one part of the argument for why the west won the Cold War  — capitalism proved to be a more successful idea than a state-controlled economy.  Thus, I would suggest that supposing (1) children from families that value and practice monogamy are more likely to be successful, and (2) such values perpetuate through generations, then this could indeed be a form of evolutionary selection.  Each successive generation from such families would have a higher likelihood of success than each successive generation from families that don't value monogamy.  Over many generational iterations, and all other factors being equal, one could predict the dominance of monogamous culture over others. 

Social evolutionary theory is a very real stream of social science, but it is obviously a much harder theory to pin down than genetic evolution because you don't have any code to point to as evidence.  I would recommend reading the groundbreaking works of Max Weber from a century ago and more recent work on evolutionary psychology by Steven Pinker, if anyone is interested. 

Another reader:

As far as genetic correlates of monogamy go, you might want to look at this study on voles…and related others. They seem to have identified a few genes that, when turned off, make a normally monogamous species polygamous. This is of course not an exact correlate to human behaviour–pair bonding in rodents is clearly not identical to human love and marriage–but it's about as good as we have right now.

I've seen the vole studies. Ed Yong had a good post on their significance a couple years back.

Illustrating Discrimination

Dignlg

by Chris Bodenner

Xeni Jardin digs up an Army comic book from 2001 instructing soldiers on DADT.  Ackerman narrates:

“Dignity and Respect” opens with the saga of Private First Class Howard. He has the misfortune of being observed in a homosexual act by two of his fellow soldiers. That triggers a tiptoe through a thicket of regulations and bureacrat-speak. Like: “What is a ‘reliable person?’” Eventually, Howard is given the boot.

Then comes the tale of Sergeant Williams. He considers himself a “good soldier,” and wants to stay in the Army. But he has the temerity to tell his superior officers that he may be homosexual. Imagine that! Gays who serve their country actually wanting to serve their country.

“You’re certain about [his] sincerity?” Williams’ first sergeant asks his commander. “I think so,” she answers. Then she recommends Williams for a discharge.

The illustrations are just begging for an Internet remix.

On Not Becoming Unhinged, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

My wife and I love each other very much.  A while into our relationship, before we married, she had her Norplant birth control device removed from her arm, and went to the NuVa ring device.  We didn’t know this at the time, but this slowly caused sex to be more painful to her, I’m guessing due to some hormonal imbalance that caused her to not produce natural lubrication, and this spiraled to more mental anguish issues.  This sex and pain issue got to the point where she suggested divorce, and I begged her to just continue trying to recover.  It’s slightly better, to the point where we can have sex, but we have to use other forms of lubrication, and we have to proceed painfully slowly.

I want to stay with her, I love her, and I know that sleeping with another woman would hurt her very badly.  But I am at a point where I feel her sex drive won’t recover, and it’s obvious she only ever does it just to satisfy me, and with very little energy.

When Dan talks about opening the door a crack, I think that I’m not sure I could travel down that road.  We have a son now.  We still love each other very much, and therefore I still want a functional family for him.  But hearing him talk about the kind of fantasies people have, about being honest with each other, and about using temporary non-monogamy to save a marriage, I gotta say it resonates with me simply because the long laborious process I have to go through simply to have sex with my wife causes me to think about getting it elsewhere.  And because of that I was demonizing myself, and I don’t want to do that anymore, because it makes matters worse.

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Bristol and Levi got engaged – again. A reader summed up reaction in the inbox, Pareene bemoaned the MSM's role, and Jesse Griffin reported a damning detail on Levi. In other news, a Tea Party spokesman fueled the NAACP's fire, Dan Choi got off the hook, John Cloud relayed research on cougars, and Pew showed how the blogosphere lives off traditional media. DOMA coverage here and especially here. Cannabis coverage here and especially here.

Weigel responded to reader objections over Trig, destroyed Megyn Kelly for fomenting racial discord, went after Beck for the same, analyzed the defeat of two Tea Party darlings, dissed Democrats for their economic politics, spotlighted a particularly unjust obscenity case, and filed another colorful dispatch from Unalaska.

Frum artfully pwned Mark Levin, recommended a payroll tax holiday for a whole year, honored Bastille Day, and chuckled at the Levi-Bristol announcement.

In other Palin coverage, Michael Kazin frowned at Cottle's admiration of her PR and Drum dreaded the spread of it. Plumer and Fallows compared BP to other oil giants, Balko defended the cop accused of murdering Oscar Grant, Jonathan Cohn touted Mariah Blake's piece on medical supplies, and Bill Peckham criticized the kidney trade. Dan Savage scolded a Dish reader and advised on open relationships while Patrick injected disease into the monogamy debate.

Readers joined the discussion on eating habits, another corrected Wilkinson on Singapore's healthcare system, and another sounded off on markets. Goddard launched a political dictionary. Badger-blogging here. MHB here, VFYW here, and FOTD here.

— C.B.

Would The Supreme Court Strike Down DOMA?

by Patrick Appel

Andy Koppelman is hopeful:

On the current Supreme Court, this case would probably depend on the swing vote of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. (If he is still there when it is heard — appeals take years, and he turns 74 later this month.) In a 1996 decision striking down a Colorado law that repealed all antidiscrimination protection for gay people, he noted that it "has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group." This kind of imposition "is unprecedented in our jurisprudence," and he declared that it "is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort." Similarly, in a 2003 decision invalidating a law banning homosexual sex, he observed that such gay-specific laws were very recent, originating in the 1970s. That same logic might well condemn DOMA, but it would be unlikely to invalidate the marriage laws of individual states.