I’ve been reading Daniel Walker Howe’s The Political Culture of the American Whigs
Month: August 2015
How Systems Get Tired
This great post by Richard Fernandez reminded me of a quote from George Eliot:
The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent.
(from Silas Marner)
Tales of Luna City – Mills Farm
(A diversion for a Friday – a bit of my own and my daughter’s version of a Texas version of Lake Woebegon or Cecily; the chronicles of Luna City, the small Texas town that the railway bypassed in the 1880s, which has a hopeless high school football team but a splendid marching band … )
Oh, what is there to say about Mills Farm, the destination event-venue, country-themed retail emporium, petting zoo, specimen garden, and country amusement park just to the south of Luna City which has not been said a thousand times already in expensive full-page advertisements in glossy lifestyle and travel magazines, or in television spots that are enticing mini-movies all crammed into sixty seconds? Because Mills Farm is owned and run by a large corporation who also own and run many similar properties – all tailored to local idiom and conditions – star-scattered across the United States and Europe, the money and expertise is most definitely there.
Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act by Leaving it Alone
The fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon Johnson August 6, 1965, has revived proposals to fill a much-needed gap in the Act, to borrow one of Hanna Gray’s favorite expressions.
The gap is thanks to the felicitous 2013 Supreme Court case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which I discussed last year in these pages. The Court held unconstitutional the Act’s archaic test for determining which states must get preclearance from the Justice Department or from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to change their election laws. The preclearance requirement–Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act–was supposed to be a temporary, emergency provision expiring five years after the Voting Rights Act became effective. But as Milton Friedman said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Congress renewed Section 5 four times, most recently in 2006, when Congress renewed it for another 25 years.
Writing for the Court in Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice Roberts said that preclearance sharply departs from basic constitutional principles by allowing the federal government to veto state laws before they go into effect, reversing the burden of proof, and forcing an oddly selected group of the states to beseech the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department or a distant court to allow them to implement a new election law.
The Court held that this onerous regime can no longer be based on a coverage formula that sweeps in states because in the 1960s or 1970s they had low voter turnout or a literacy test. Striking down the coverage formula left Section 2 of the Act still in effect. Under Section 2, state voting laws can still be challenged in court. Section 2 does not reverse the burden of proof but leaves it where it normally is in the law—on the challenger.
Nonetheless, the party line still compels liberals to recite, in nearly every article in which they mention the subject, that in Shelby County the Supreme Court “gutted” the Voting Rights Act–or better yet committed an “Historic Gutting.” Substituting a synonym for “gutted” seems to be frowned upon and may even require a trigger warning.
“Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act,” wrote the President in a letter to the editor of the New York Times last week. He and others on left remain under the misconception that in striking down the coverage formula for preclearance, the Supreme Court invited Congress to write a new one and now Congress just needs to get about the business of accepting his invitation. There was no invitation, just a warning that a new preclearance formula based on current conditions would raise the question of whether the preclearance requirement itself is unconstitutional.
Republicans in Congress do not need to help set the stage for that controversy. Instead, they should take the offensive and counter that as the states ought not to be treated like vassals, it’s time to consider repealing Section 5 altogether. Short of that, they should leave to languish in committee proposals to rehabilitate an anachronistic affront to federalism.
Healthy Lifestyle 24/7
The Wall Street Journal had a fascinating, to me, article on A Simple Fix for Drunken Driving called Sobriety 24/7 now implemented in North and South Dakota, and Montana.
(DUI) Offenders in 24/7 Sobriety can drive all they want to, but they are under a court order not to drink. Every morning and evening, for an average of five months, they visit a police facility to take a breathalyzer test. Unlike most consequences imposed by the criminal justice system, the penalties for noncompliance are swift, certain and modest. Drinking results in mandatory arrest, with a night or two in jail as the typical penalty.
The benefits of the program aren’t just confined to road safety; counties using 24/7 Sobriety experienced not only a 12% drop in repeat drunken-driving arrests but also a 9% drop in domestic-violence arrests. Unlike interventions that only constrain drinking while driving, the removal of alcohol from an offender’s life also reduces the incidence of other alcohol-related crimes.
Why do repeat offenders change their behavior in response to relatively modest incentives? Patients continue using cocaine in the face of great harm to their families, livelihoods and physical health, yet they could still be induced to refrain from it when promised a small reward, like $10 for a negative urine test. The reward was relatively trivial, but it was unlike other potential consequences because it was both certain and immediate.
It turns out that people with drug and alcohol problems are just like the rest of us. Their behavior is affected much more by what is definitely going to happen today than by what might or might not happen far in the future, even if the potential future consequences are more serious.
Today we were talking to a big data company that can extract enormous amounts of information from your cell phone and make even more incredible inferences about your life style. How long will it be before your wearable will have a bluetooth connection to your phone to transmit all kinds of information on your biologic state? Certainly within two decades, possibly less. It will be able to monitor your body function and relate it to the unhealthy lifestyle choices you made in the last 24 hours.
At least half of our medical costs are the result of behavior that will not happen today and might or might not happen far in the future. Let’s assume that insurance costs $5,000 per person, probably not far off. Would you sign up for a policy that cost only $2,500 but required you to wear the monitor system and took $10 from your checking account and told you what you did the day before to warrant it any time you engaged in sufficiently unhealthy life style? It’s coming within years to auto insurance. I can’t imagine living in that world. That’s why it’s good we are mortal. One can only take a limited amount of change. And progress requires change.
Somewhere Mary Baker Eddy and BF Skinner are smiling.