Civil Rights Leader Coretta Scott King Dies

Story here. She died a day before Black History Month, begins, which may be eerily apropos.

My question: are the Rev. and Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr. as relevant -- and powerful -- figures in the civil rights movement / racial equality movement today as they were in the last 1960s? Why and why not? Who is the "next generation" of civil rights leaders?

Week 3: Affirmative Action

On the eve of Black History Month and following the recent death of civil rights activist, Coretta Scott King, the following discussion seems especially appropriate. Rather than get bogged down in the history of/legal basis for affirmative action, I think we should instead focus our discussion on whether we think affirmative action programs are necessary/appropriate, have been successful, and whether or not there is a continued need for such programs.

Just so we all know what we’re talking about, here’s a definition of affirmative action (courtesy of Wikipedia):

“Affirmative action, or positive discrimination, is a policy or a program promoting the representation in various systems of people of a group who have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society. This typically focuses on education, employment, health care, or social welfare.

In employment, affirmative action may also be known as employment equity or preferential hiring. In this context affirmative action requires that institutions increase hiring and promotion of candidates of mandated groups.”

To get things started, here are quotes from two proponents of affirmative action:

"Whenever this issue [compensatory treatment] is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up."
-Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others', and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."
-Pres. Lyndon Johnson

And here’s some criticism of affirmative action programs from the economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell (again, courtesy of Wikipedia):

• They encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e. primary beneficiary of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies;
• They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. black millionaires), oftentimes to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g. poor whites);
• They reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best — the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile — thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and
• They engender animosity toward preferred groups as well as on the part of preferred groups themselves, whose main problem in some cases has been their own inadequacy combined with their resentment of non-preferred groups who — without preferences — consistently outperform them.

So, is affirmative action an appropriate response to racial inequality? If so, has it been effective and is there still a need for such programs today? If not, why is it not an appropriate response, and what do you think would have been a more effective course of action?

The No-Fly List, what a joke!

But not a very funny one, sadly, as Bruce Schneier points out, with yet another story of mistaken identity leading to wrongful, Star Chamber-style detention. Ah, what a tragic comedy of errors indeed!

If you guys are not already reading Schneier in some form or other, I advise you to start! It's all in there, security, civil rights, and how exchanging the latter for the former is--as tha big homey B dot Frizzle himself pointed out--is a terrible security tradeoff.

Guns don't kill people...

... idiots kill people! But idiots with guns are better at it. Maybe this guy should go join the new Hamas-led Parliament in the Palestinian Authority; they wouldn't have even flinched. They might have joined in!

I wonder if you get all those virgins in heaven if you get shot by a former high school principal from Henrico County in a statehouse building...probably just a few "technical" virgins and a bunch of "low mileage" non-virgins (only previous experience with previously-killed ACTUAL martyrs).

Wayward Christian Soldiers

This is a totally fascinating op-ed. I was basically nodding my head from start to finish...

Bad idea?

Or just further proof that "white people just don't understand." I think its possible that his inability to understand what was happening speaks more to the reason he left 20 questions blank than the "trauma".

UCLA Students Urged to Expose "Radical" Professors

Story here.

Week 1: Welfare

Welfare is:

...financial assistance paid by the government to certain groups of people who are unable to support themselves, due to unemployment, disability or other reasons.

Assistance may include tax credits for working mothers, and subsidies for farmers, ranchers, and others. Welfare is known by a variety of names in different countries, all with the fundamental purpose of providing an economic "safey net" for disadvantaged members of society. Almost all developed countries provide some safety net of this kind.

Welfare payments are typically low, and may fall below the poverty line. Recipients must usually demonstrate a low level of income (e.g. by way of "means testing") or financial hardship, or that they satisfy some other requirement (childcare responsibilities or disability), or regularly demonstrate that they are periodically searching for employment. Some countries -- and some U.S. states -- assign specific jobs to recipients who must work in these roles in order for welfare payments to continue (in the U.S. and Canada, such programs are known as "workfare").

Social security is a form of welfare -- in fact, it's the largest government program in the world. Arguably, agricultural and farm subsidies are forms of welfare.

There are arguments for and against welfare. Some arguments in favor include:

• humanitarian - the idea that people should not suffer unnecessarily
• democratic - voters in most countries have favoured the gradual extension of social protection
• ethical - reciprocity (or exchange) is nearly universal as a moral principle, and most welfare systems are based around patterns of generalised exchange. Altruism, or helping others, is a moral obligation in most cultures, and charity and support for poorer people are also widely thought to be moral.
• religious - most major world religions emphasise the importance of social organisation rather than personal development alone. Religious obligations include the duty of charity and the obligation for solidarity
• mutual self-interest - several national systems have developed voluntarily through the growth of mutual insurance
• economic - social programs perform a range of economic functions, including e.g. the regulation of demand and structuring the labour market.
• social - social programs are used to promote objectives regarding education, family and work
• the failure of the private sector - advocates of social provision argue that the private sector fails to meet social objectives or to deliver the efficient production that economic theory claims.

There are arguments against welfare:

• libertarian - state intervention infringes individual freedom; the individual should not be forced to subsidize the consumption of others
• conservative - social spending has undesirable effects on behavior, fostering dependency and reducing incentives to work
• economic - social spending is costly and requires high taxes. The welfare state has undesirable economic effects and thus, paradoxically, a negative effect on the welfare of its citizens
• individualist - social spending reduces the freedom of wealthy or successful individuals by transferring some of their wealth to others (this argument is important also for libertarians and conservatives)
• anti-regulatory - the welfare state is accused of greater state control over businesses, stifling growth and creating unemployment.
• the free market - advocates of the market believe that it leads to more efficient and effective production and service delivery than state-run welfare programs.
• Hayekian - the institutions of government are unable to collect knowledge to respond to specific circumstances as well as civil society is.
• Religious - Some Christians are opposed to a welfare state since it compels people to be generous, which is in opposition to the Christian concept of voluntary giving. The more people give in taxes, the less opportunity they have to give charitably of their own free will.

I'd suggest we spend less time debating the historical and political origins of welfare in the U.S., and focus more completely on the philosphical foundation(s), practical analysis, and future, of welfare programs. Try to remember we're talking about a broad range of government programs. Let me be more blunt: we're not simply discussing unwed, poor, black women in inner cities... we're discussing federal entitlement programs that derive their monies from taxes, and aim to provide social services and a "net" to disadvantaged individuals, however we choose to define those terms.

Discussion questions:

1. Does welfare need reform, is it fine "as is" or should it be dismantled completely?
2. Where do farm and agricultural subsidies fall (e.g., "welfare for farmers")?
3. Are welfare recipients being "lazy"?
4. Does welfare perpetuate or decrease poverty?

I'll be around to moderate. Have at it, Schmoliticians!

A Modest Proposal?

OK, Schmoliticians. I'm proposing an 8- or 12-week course of debate about "the big issues". I'm thinking this will work best if each of us can commit to posting his/her opinion -- in a fairly well-articulated fashion -- on a few select topics. Some of you will want to weigh in on each topic (Pete). Some of you will weigh in on just one or two issues. Mostly, I'd like to do a more deliberate surveying of our little salon, to gauge where we stand, how we differ, and why we think what we think. Toward this end, I propose one of us lead that week's topic (by creating the initial discussion post), and "guide" the debate from there. I volunteer to lead the first week's discussion, whatever we determine it to be:

• Welfare [Sean] - 1/16/06
• Environment, global warming & impact on business [Shanan]- 1/23/06
• Affirmative action [Rob] - 1/30/06
• Separation of church & state [Randy] - 2/6/06
• Foreign policy [Josh] - 2/13/06
• Free trade, globalization, and labor outsourcing [Todd] - 2/20/06
• Income taxation
• The U.S. political climate
• The role of the Executive
• Domestic spying
• Judicial activism

How does this sound? Does anyone a) want to volunteer to lead a discussion, b) have an "order" for these topics and c) have new topics to discuss?

I just love you Tom DeLay!

You never disappoint me. You're always within smelling distance of any GOP scandal, like the Boss Tweed of former bug exterminators. Its like you were MADE for public corruption. Reading about your most recent appalling offense against the public trust is like donning a familiar pair of slippers. Feels like home!

Hmmmm, was somebody...

...about to write an explosive article on domestic spying? Maybe something on how much the Admin really knew about WMD prior to invading Iraq? Did he find the unknown third country where we've been sending prisoners to be "not tortured"? The previously-unknown love child from back in W's "drinkin' days"? I smell a rat.


White House to G. Gordon Liddy, Jr.: "Make it look like a robbery!"

There you go again...

Well, Pat Robertson has, once again, decided that God has taken someone out for going against God (i.e. against Robertson's political beliefs). This time God smote the Prime Minister of Israel. Man, it is incredible how Robertson knows just what God is thinking and exactly how he will react...

Gentlemen, start your resigning...

Well, I guess ol' Duke Cunningham was just the first Republican lawmaker to have to resign in the face of a corruption scandal. He's just gonna be the first of the Class of '05-'06 once Abramoff's done singin' to the Feds. Hmmm, maybe Texas is the least of Tom DeLay's problems. Let the good times . . . er . . . heads roll!

Abramoff Pleads Guilty

Article here.