October 2013 – Page 71

Taming The Youth

Lissa Rivera considers the playground as a means for social control around the turn of the 20th century:

Due to the long working hours for all members of the family, youth who lived independent lives, with no formal education, learned from the streets. Under harsh vocational conditions, they were no strangers to violent social interactions. They often recreated these interactions in rough play and developed their own social hierarchies in “mini gangs.” Nineteenth-century city streets teemed with “street urchins” out at all hours of the day. In New York City laws were established prohibiting playing outdoors in an attempt to tame the rampant street-culture.

Activist and photographer Jacob Riis championed the Child-Saving Movement to build supervised play spaces as safe-havens for children. … These spaces were influenced by the ‘sand gardens’ developed in Germany as part of the naturalist movement inspired by Darwin and Fröbel (who introduced kindergarten) to promote physical perfection in a system of strong moral values toward a more promising civic society. Although progressive, municipally ordained playgrounds were built to protect children from dangers within the urban environment, they can also be seen as deterrents from the imaginative culture that flourishes with less regulation.

(Photo: Waiting To Be Let Into Playground, ca. 1900. By Jacob Riis. Museum of the City of New York, 90.13.4.52.)

Liliana Segura puts out the latest report on the businesses exploiting America’s penal system, including a phone company that charges $1.13 a minute for calls and a healthcare provider that “discourages treatment for hepatitis”:

Defenders of for-profit prison services pitch them as superior, efficient, money-saving options for cash-strapped states and localities that can ill-afford the costs of mass incarceration. (And indeed, historically, state-run services have often proven abysmal in themselves.) But not only do such privatized services often end up more expensive in reality, they can incur huge unseen costs to inmates and their families. Worse still are the implications on a larger scale: when corporations seek to profit from prisons, it creates a powerful financial incentive, not just to push for policies that fuel mass incarceration but to cut corners in the services they’ve been hired to provide. Society shows little concern for prisoners who might receive substandard food, phone service or healthcare behind bars, after all.

Cory Doctorow lists some disturbing facts from Segura’s piece:

These prisons are not subject to freedom of information requests, are not inspected in the same way as public prisons, and have profit-taking built into their billion-dollar business, meaning that every dollar they spend on care and rehabilitation for prisoners is a dollar they don’t return to their shareholders.

Previous Dish on for-profit prisons here.

The Best Of The Dish Today

Two big ones: on the torture jokes at a Cheney roast in Manhattan, organized by Commentary; and an essay on the horrifying treatment of farm animals by a Palin supporter. One priceless heckler MHB, which keeps cracking me up at random moments. And in the latest outbreak of Christianity in the Vatican, the Pope wrote a letter to a bunch of gay Catholics.

On the great Republican hold-up, there were some tentative signs that the tide may be turning against the extremists, as the GOP’s ratings went into free-fall. Dumbo got shot down by Syrian Jihadists. And submarine smugglers!

The most popular post of the day was this one. The close runner-up? This one.

As I write this, we have 29,986 subscribers. Get us to 30,000 by subscribing [tinypass_offer text=”here”].

And see you in the morning.

The Sequel To Citizens United

Ben Jacobs explains the basics of McCutcheon v. SEC:

Currently, federal law doesn’t just limit the amount of money that any individual can give to any federal candidate or campaign committee but the total amount that can be contributed. Individuals can give no more than $48,600 to all federal candidates and an additional $74,600 to all political party committees. The question is whether the aggregate limits unconstitutionally inhibit the free speech of donors or are a necessary check on corruption, like a restriction on giving “a Maserati to the secretary of defense,” to cite an example used by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

Garrett Epps expects campaign finance regulation to suffer another blow:

In the years since Citizens United, some wishful commentators—including myself—have suggested the Court might be daunted by the chaos that case has unleashed. On the evidence of yesterday’s argument, however, that seems unlikely. The five conservatives are moving confidently toward total deregulation of campaign finance. The only real question is whether they will take only one step—holding that aggregate limits are not allowed but individual-contribution limits are—or the entire leap, holding that contributions are speech and cannot be limited at all.

Scott Lemieux agrees “the Supreme Court is overwhelmingly likely to strike down aggregate campaign limits to candidates and may go further than that.” Why he’s unhappy about that result:

Prohibiting corruption is important, but for democracy to be meaningful the inequalities of the market cannot allow a select group of extremely wealthy individuals to dominate the political process. … Social scientists have shown that politicians pay far more attention to the interests of the wealthy. This has contributed to making the United States unusually inegalitarian for an advanced democracy. Preventing Congress from modestly addressing this unequal influence requires much more compelling arguments than have been advanced by the challengers here.

Adam Lioz makes related points:

What’s at stake in the case? New research from Demos and U.S. PIRG projects that striking aggregate limits would bring more than $1 billion in additional “McCutcheon Money” through the 2020 election cycle, from just slightly more than 1,500 elite donors. This is not a sea change in overall election spending, and much of this money may be shifted from Super PACs to candidates and parties. But, it will continue to shift the balance of power from average citizens to a tiny minority of wealthy donors. And, who are these wealthy donors? In a nutshell, they don’t look like the rest of the country, but rather are avatars of what Public Campaign calls “Country Club Politics.”

Jacob Sullum, on the other hand, wants the campaign restrictions struck down. His argument:

Under current law, a wealthy man can spend as much money as he wants on his own political campaign or on independent messages advocating a candidate’s election. But he can give that candidate’s campaign no more than $5,200.

This puzzling restriction violates the First Amendment rights of the candidate as well as the donor. It rules out insurgent campaigns by challengers (such as Eugene McCarthy in 1968) who have not managed to build wide networks of donors but have attracted support from a few rich patrons. It thereby makes elections less competitive, contributing to alarmingly high re-election rates for members of Congress.

Richard Hasen is unsure how SCOTUS will rule:

I am not certain that the five conservative justices who struck down the corporate spending limits in Citizens United will strike the aggregate limits in McCutcheon. The concerns that would raise about corruption are nicely illustrated in an amicus brief from the Campaign Legal Center, a public interest group supporting campaign finance regulation. A member of Congress, for example, would be able ask for a single $3.6 million contribution (through a “joint fundraising committee”—essentially an arrangement to take a check to be disbursed to more than one campaign) to distribute to all federal congressional candidates and to national and local political parties. He or she could keep from that check only $5,200 ($2,600 for the primary and another $2,600 for the general election), but the parties and PACs could then use the passed-on funds to run ads attacking his or her opponent. As a big bundler, this member of Congress would have great influence over other members. And, of course, the $3.6 million donor would have the most influence of all.

(Photo: David Barrows, of Washington, DC, waves a flag with corporate logos and fake money during a rally against money in politics outside the Supreme Court October 8, 2013 in Washington, DC. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Committee, a first amendment case that will determine how much money an individual can contribute directly to political campaigns. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Where’s The Liberal Tea Party?

Waldman explains why the Tea Party has no left-wing equivalent. A key point:

Many Tea Partiers are people who hadn’t run for office before 2010, or maybe had served briefly in a state legislature where they were bomb-throwers, not legislators. They won their primaries by promising to be the most conservative, Obama-hating member of Congress the folks of their district had ever seen. In contrast, almost none of the safe Democratic members got elected just by saying that they were the most liberal candidate in their race. Most of them worked their way up through the lower political ranks, getting used to cutting deals, making compromises, and solving problems for constituents. They may be very liberal ideologically, but they’re also old-school pols in many ways.

That gives them a practicality that their conservative counterparts don’t have.

Scott Galupo wants the Republicans to purge itself of the Tea Party:

The very nature of Tea Party opposition, whether it issues from the likes of Bazooka Ted and His Gang in the Senate or the unappeasable Jacobins in the House, is to throw weight without consequence. They evince no interest in actually wielding power from the inside, which would require restraint, conciliation, and moderation. They are hysterics on the brink of utter demoralization. The danger they pose to democratic norms, institutional comity, and political functionality is precisely why they can’t be bargained with; they must be marginalized.

The Anti-Sitcom

Joseph Winkler praises It’s Always Sunny as the fun, nasty antidote to the bright sincerity of most other shows, such as “Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, Raising Hope, and even 30 Rock”:

[If] any sin can be said to exist in the amoral world of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it is the sin of boredom, which is perhaps its most scathing satire and commentary in the world of sitcoms. A sitcom essentially takes life situations and makes them less boring through unlikely, quirky, and slightly absurd twists. Something always happens in a sitcom — someone gets sick, or a miscommunication causes problems — but there is always a resolution, and in hindsight, the conflict was wholly innocuous. Sitcoms often try to depict TV life as a considerably less boring version of our lives, but that their reach is so limited often makes the shows boring in of themselves. (A county fair gone awry, Tracy Jordan is acting up again!). That our sitcoms, embroidered versions of our lives, start to feel boring is a testament to the prevalent sterility and innocuousness of our daily lives (Wake up, go to work, come home, family time, watch TV, et cetera). It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, if only for a mere twenty-two minutes a week, gives us a chance to enter a world without stakes; their idle schemes are the elixir for our idle generation.

Who Is Janet Yellen?

Justin Wolfers introduces us to Obama’s Fed chair nominee:

Many will be keen to characterize Yellen’s appointment in the usual hawk-dove spectrum, with most analysts suggesting that she’s more concerned about reaching full employment than controlling inflation, making her a dove. This framing misses something important: While it’s true that Yellen has forcefully advocated for more monetary stimulus in recent years, what’s more notable is that she has gotten the big calls right. Those who argued for tighter monetary policy have been proven wrong. Inflation rates that have been persistently below target, and unemployment has been too high.

Dylan Matthews argues that Yellen is less dovish than she is made out to be:

As Evan Soltas and Matt O’Brien have noted, Yellen is plenty hawkish when the situation requires it. In the mid-1990s, when she served on the Fed Board of Governors, she made it clear that she thought unemployment was dangerously low, low enough that employers have to hike wages, which in turn leads to higher prices, i.e. inflation. “We have an economy operating at a level where we need to be nervous about rising inflation,” she said at one meeting. “We can’t dismiss the possibility that compensation growth will drift upward, raising core inflation and in turn inflationary expectations. This is a major risk. Obviously, we need to be vigilant in scrutinizing the data for signs of rising wages and salaries.”

So inflation hawks, take heart — if and when it’s actually worth worrying about inflation, Yellen will be ready to handle it.

Noam Scheiber hopes that Yellen will be tough on Wall Street:

Yellen’s social circle … consists mostly of tweedy professors and government officials. She strikes me as sufficiently devoid of attachments to bankers and money managers that she can imagine them having some truly terrible ideas—even the smart, witty, seemingly upstanding ones. This is in fact more true of her than the average senior Fed official in New York or Washington. Much of her tenure at the Fed was in San Francisco, thousands of miles away from Wall Street special pleaders.

Neil Irwin notes that “the Fed Yellen inherits is even more complicated than those led by Bernanke and Greenspan, so too will be her challenges”:

What unpredictable ripple effects is the multi-trillion Fed balance sheet having for the global economy, and how much should Fed leaders account for those in their policymaking? What is the interplay between the Fed’s low interest rate policies and excessive risk-taking in different corners of the financial world that could create new bubbles? How do you apply the lessons of the crisis to regulate banks and other institutions more effectively, implementing the immensely complicated Dodd-Frank Act? Does the very transparency that Bernanke has spent his chairmanship pushing create problems of its own, markets hear so much information about what the Fed is thinking and doing that there is unnecessary volatility?

Yellen has made her greatest mark as a thinker about employment and monetary. But as chairman, it will now be her problem to come up with answers to this full gamut of questions.

Yglesias sees Yellen’s nomination as a victory for women:

She’ll be the most important woman in economic policy in American history: It’s probably no coincidence that it took someone so super-duper-duper-qualified to break this particular glass ceiling. No woman has ever chaired the Federal Reserve. Nor has any woman ever chaired any of the other major central banks. We’ve never had a woman run the Treasury Department or the National Economic Council.

Hanna Rosin predicts that the focus on her gender will fade:

If all goes as planned, we will soon forget about the fact that she is a woman. Stories about the first female head of a major central bank will die down. Instead, much as happened with Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton as Secretaries of State, we will start debating her policies, her interest rate decisions, her inflation targets, her easy money programs. We will move one step closer to not having to discuss or even think much about the fact that the person deciding our monetary policy wears lipstick sometimes.

Face Of The Day

Harvard University emeritus professor Martin Karplus speaks to the media after winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry at Harvard University on October 9, 2013. Karplus shared the prize with Michael Levitt of Stanford University and Arieh Warshel of the University of Southern California for developing research that laid the groundwork for computer programs that are used by pharmaceutical company trying to develop drugs. By Darren McCollester/Getty Images.

Yes, Francis Reached Out To Gay Catholics!

He responded to a letter from an Italian gay group, the first time they have ever received a response from anyone in the Catholic hierarchy. A Dish reader translated the story. Can you imagine Benedict doing such a thing? Money quote:

Pope Francis wrote that “he appreciated very much what we had written to him, calling it a gesture of ‘spontaneous confidence’, as well as ‘the way in which we had written it.’”

The full translated story is here. Know hope.

Shutting Down The Safety Net

Adam Serwer worries about the shutdown’s effects on food aid:

If the shutdown lasts into November, Americans reliant on SNAP could find themselves without aid, depending on the fiscal health of the state or the priorities of state leadership. A spokesperson for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration told MSNBC that “If the shutdown continues beyond October, the State of Indiana will assess its resources and consider its options for continuing to provide SNAP benefits.” Similarly, a spokesperson for Mississippi’s Department of Human Services said they would look to the USDA for guidance.

Sasha Abramsky considers the mental toll this takes on the poor:

We don’t know how long the shutdown will last, and that uncertainty, too, is harder on the poor. The stress of not knowing what tomorrow will bring can be debilitating.

If you’re on food stamps, the fact that the Department of Agriculture believes that it can fund the program through the end of October is better than nothing—but the prospect of not being able to pay for food in November is anxiety-provoking in a way that puts even more pressure on families that already have their fair share of it.

When I was reporting my book “The American Way of Poverty,” several people talked to me about the impact that the stress associated with poverty had on them: on their ability to focus, on their mood, on their blood pressure, on their energy level. In late 2011, an ex-accountant who had lost her job at the start of the recession and spiraled downward spoke of losing weight due to her worries. A man who had lost the business he had owned talked of how his plight made him feel “worthless.” A hungry teen-ager in a suburb east of Los Angeles told me that he cried daily.

Month: October 2013