Some interesting thoughts from daughter Cobie

Like myself, Cobie thinks things through by writing.  Here is a recent document that I thought was worth sharing more widely.

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The Question:

I've kept trying to decide: Do I want to focus almost all my volunteer time on reducing animal suffering? Or do I want to spend some of that time trying to help people learn about political issues in general?

The Tentative Conclusion:

I think I've decided to spend most of my time on animal issues. Yes, I'll want to do a little learning about other issues like any citizen should. And I'd like to keep going to an Unlike Minds meeting once a month – discussed further below. Possibly write a letter to the newspaper sometime about what I've learned from having political discussions with people who disagree on issues (and write a few letters about animal issues too). But I don't think I'll really get involved with teaching people about other issues.

Discussion:

What I had thought about doing to help teach people about political issues: First, learn more about the issues myself. And do some experimenting in our Unlike Minds group (a group of 9 people with differing political views who get together for friendly conversations – one of several such groups here in town). In Unlike Minds, we can try various ways to discuss issues. Later, encourage additional people to learn about issues. Possible ways we can help people learn: Spread Unlike Minds to more people, and/or start a website or social media site that talks about ways to learn about issues. Maybe each person who visited the website could post their own suggestions about how to study issues on a separate webpage.

Maybe many others are already doing the things I've thought about, that would help people learn about political issues? I'd like to know.

The reason I was thinking of helping spread political issues in general, is that I don't know whether there are many people doing things like Unlike Minds, or like websites with suggestions about ways to study issues. Whereas with animal issues, I know that some people have thought very carefully about how to spread animal issues, and they are doing some very effective things.

How important are animal issues compared with other issues? On the one hand, there are a lot more farm animals than there are humans on Earth, so animal issues affect more individuals than any other issue. On the other hand, there are crises to be prevented (wars, enviromental problems, recessions), and some of these crises could make it harder to spread information about animals (and could harm a lot of humans as well).

But my impression is that humans have a lot of incentive to prevent crises that could harm us, less incentive to help animals. A lot of people are working to try to prevent human crises, and most likely they will succeed. In the previous century the world survived wars, the Great Depression, etc., and we will probably make it this time, too.

Maybe environmental problems could sneak up on us and kill us all (I don't really know), but if a lot of people consume fewer animal products, that will help the environment a lot.

Another way to look at it: Wouldn't it be a shame if a lot of us got together to stop the crises that might affect humans, and then we watched as the world went on happily abusing animals?

Possibly by promoting the careful study of all issues, I could persuade some people to learn about animal issues. But I would guess that promoting animal issues is going to do the animals more good than a general promotion of studying issues carefully – this of course is all guesswork. So I'm thinking that I shouldn't spend a lot of time on other angles in the upcoming years. If, in some future decade, all the colleges (and high schools?) in the developed world are saturated with literature about factory farming, then I might start to try other ways to convince people to be more compassionate. (In my opinion, the best way to be compassionate is to move toward a plant-based diet – but that's another discussion.)

If it weren't for all the animal suffering, I would work to work to stop human suffering. But I think the best thing I can do under current circumstances is to work to stop animal suffering. There are so many animals who are suffering, and I think the animals are getting much less attention than the “crisis” issues are.

Asking for Feedback:

My overall goal is to reduce suffering, not to work on animal issues or work on other issues.

Do you agree that working on animal issues is the best way that I can reduce suffering? I'd appreciate feedback.

NOTES:

• I'm asking several people for feedback on this, because I reached these conclusions after a conversation with just one person. I remember 20 years ago I decided to go to graduate school after a conversation with another student and didn't discuss it with anyone else. I later realized that going to graduate school had not been what I wanted at all (although other people are welcome to go to graduate school.) So for this decision, I'd like to get several people's feedback.
• I haven't read The World Peace Diet yet. It's someone's opinion about the relation between animal issues and human issues.
• Does anyone know of other movements that are similar to Unlike Minds, or of websites or social media sites that help people learn about good ways to study issues?
• I also want to try praying/meditating in case that gives me any insight.
• I think that for working on animal issues, I'd like to mostly spend my time handing out literature to college students like I've been doing.
• My understanding of things is always evolving, but this is my current impression of what I should work on.
• Sometimes I wish the world were different than it is. I wish it were better for both animals and humans.

Our leaders are smarter than they act

Citizens United has become an all-purpose whipping boy for political outcomes disliked by liberals.  Critics  of the Supreme Court’s decision complain that democracy is undermined when corporations are free to spend huge amounts to influence leaders and elections,  benefiting the rich at the expense of the 99%.

Even before Tuesday’s recall election in Wisconsin,  critics were blaming the poll-predicted failure on “outside” corporate money flooding the state with TV commercials defending Republican Governor Scott Walker. 

The Court’s decision in Citizens United was not,  however,  unreasonable.  It took literally the First Amendment’s command that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”   It ruled as proposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, not a hotbed of conservative,  corporate-friendly sentiments.  It  frees unions as well as corporations to spend money on political advocacy.  And on many issues,   big corporations can be found on both sides.   

Elections are decided by voters,  not by money.  We have never had a president named Rockefeller or Perot.   Citizens United does not change the fact that  “the 99%” are potentially  99% of the voters, and that they could vote in their own interests if they took the time to inform themselves and to think seriously about candidates and issues.

Critics of  Citizens United  complain that voters can be manipulated.  This is true for some voters some of the time.   But to the extent that voters can be manipulated,  overturning the Supreme Court’s decision would not improve matters.  It would just disadvantage some fat cats to the benefit of other fat cats (like the corporate  newspaper and TV chains, which were totally free to propagandize even before Citizens United was decided).   If voters can be manipulated it doesn’t matter much who does the manipulating.

The true remedy to any problems that may have been created by Citizens United is for Americans to take citizenship seriously,  to actively seek to inform themselves,  and to learn how to think about political candidates and issues so that they cannot be manipulated by anybody.

People often assume that our problems are caused by bad leaders.   Our present leaders do and say many stupid things, but this is not  because they are stupid.  Too often, it is because if they talked sense the voters wouldn’t stand for it and would throw them out at the next election. 

If a substantial number of voters would spend an hour a day boning up on issues and learning how to think productively about politics,  this would make it possible for leaders and potential leaders to talk sense and act wisely more of the time.

There was a famous sign on President Harry Truman’s desk:  “The buck stops here.”    This is true for presidential decisions during emergencies.  But for many important decisions,   Truman’s sign was misleading. The buck ultimately stops with our voters,  not with our leaders.  Our leaders are smarter than they currently can afford to act.

Obamacare: How the Supreme Court could rule unanimously

Many pundits predict  the Supreme Court will decide the Obamacare case  5:4 along partisan lines.  Justices Scalia,  Alito, and Thomas and Chief Justice Roberts,  they assume,  will vote to strike the legislation down,   and justices Breyer,  Ginsburg,  Sotomayor and Kagan will vote to uphold it.  If these predictions are correct,  the outcome will depend on Justice Kennedy,  often considered the “swing” vote between Court conservatives and liberals. 

The guessing is that Justice Kennedy will tip the case to the conservative side.

This is all most unfortunate.  An extremely important decision about public policy is at stake,  and policy decisions are supposed to be made by elected politicians, not by judicial ideologues. 

Still,  policy decisions by elected officials must not exceed the limits posed by the Constitution.  And there are weighty reasons why mandated purchase of insurance could be considered unconstitutional.  

Back in 1954 when the Supreme Court  found segregated public schools to be unconstitutional,  Chief Justice Earl Warren managed to get a unanimous decision of this highly contentious case.  It is generally thought that this unanimity helped gain eventual public acceptance of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.  . 

A unanimous decision by the nine justices,  avoiding the appearance of partisanship, would be equally desirable in the current case. A unanimous decision to uphold Obamacare is unlikely.  But a unanimous decision to declare it unconstitutional is not impossible and could be the best possible outcome both from the legal and the policy point of view.  .

The Administration argues that mandated purchase of insurance is essential if everyone is to be insured.  But a unanimous Court could rely on reasoning supplied by an amicus curia brief submitted to the Court on behalf of 50 medical doctors (and other people) who support a single-payer insurance system.   The doctors’ basic argument is that the mandate to buy insurance cannot be justified as the only way to skin the cat, since an alternative exists.  They point out that a  single payer system supported by taxes is clearly constitutional,  exists in a number of countries,  and already exists in the U.S. for people over 65. 

Such reasoning could unite all members of the Court, would  rest on strong constitutional logic and precedent,  and would  help to focus future policy discussions by elected leaders.  And from comments made during oral argument, at least one justice (interestingly,  Kennedy) was familiar with the doctors’ argument.  As the Court’s principal swing voter,   Kennedy  would be in a strong position to lead the Court to a unanimous decision along these lines if he is so inclined.

Such a decision would give everyone something to be happy about.  Conservatives would be happy that the Court avoided setting the dangerous precedent that people can be compelled to buy goods or services.  Liberals could take satisfaction that the Court had drawn favorable attention to  a single-payer system paid for by taxes, their preferred solution all along,  and perhaps helped make such a system politically possible in the near future.    

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This piece has run in the Daily Telegram,  Adrian, Michigan,  and on CommonDreams.org .

Repudiate "Obamacare"? Here is a radical strategy for Obama

No matter how the Supreme Court decides the medical insurance cases, we face prolonged uncertainty. If it upholds the law, Republicans will sabotage implementation and promise to repeal it when they return to power. If it strikes down the law, the uncertainty will be what, if anything, Congress will do next. Confusion will be even greater if the Court only strikes down parts of the law.

The only way to avoid crippling uncertainty will be to stop the Supreme Court from making any decision at all. President Obama could do this by announcing that he is now convinced—after considering the arguments at the Court---that the 2700 page law is unconstitutional. He would add that he has also concluded the law is unwise: too complex, precarious in its financing, too many provisions added merely to gain votes needed for passage. He can say we must do better than this and ask Congress to repeal the entire mess, depriving the Supreme Court of any opportunity to make a further mess. Congress would undoubtedly comply with this request.

Obama would explain that the obvious solution to our insurance problems would be a single-payer system (“Medicare for all”) financed by taxes, which would clearly be constitutional. Unfortunately he had to rule this out during his first term because he had promised not to raise taxes on anybody but the rich. He would apologize for making a promise that prevented him from doing what he thought best for the country.

Obama would announce that his re-election campaign will focus on showing voters why a single payer system is the best idea, noting that his promise not to raise taxes was only for his current term. He will note that elimination of insurance premiums (now paid directly or indirectly by employees) will make up for the tax increases required by a single payer system. In fact the average person will come out ahead since money now paying for insurance company management will be greatly reduced.

The President’s principal goal would be to convince conservatives and Republican voters, since most Democrats and liberals would already agree. He should stress the simplicity and efficiency of single payer systems and the experience of foreign countries with such systems. He should ask conservatives to consider whether, even if they feel secure with their present insurance, they can be sure that they won’t lose their jobs (and hence their insurance), and whether they can be sure that their children and grandchildren will be equally fortunate.

To guarantee enactment of single payer, Obama would ask voters—including Republicans--- to elect overwhelming Democratic majorities to Congress, “just this once.” If he can convince enough people, single payer could be implemented and not be reversed later on. Republican politicians, if they see overwhelming voter support for single payer, will get religion in a hurry. (Remember George “segregation forever” Wallace, who hastily abandoned this idea after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 brought large numbers of black voters to the polls.)

If he fails to convince enough people, Obama will lose the election. But he will be remembered as a great president who did his best to lead Americans in a direction he honestly thought desirable and was not afraid to admit making mistakes. And he will have helped educate public opinion so that a single payer system could become politically possible in the future.

Does President Obama have the imagination and courage to repudiate Obamacare? We will see.

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This piece has run in the Daily Telegram (Adrian, Michigan) and on CommonDreams.

Scrap "natural born citizenship" requirement for presidents

Americans often assume the Constitution is perfect. Our founders, however, made no such assumption and therefore made provisions for amending it.

One of the most mischievous clauses in the Constitution is section 1 of article 2:

“No person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of president . . . .”

Several presidents and major presidential contenders have been accused of violating this requirement: President Chester Arthur, Charles Evans Hughes (later appointed Chief Justice) , Barry Goldwater, George Romney (Mitt Romney’s father) , and most recently John McCain and President Barack Obama.

Though it disqualified various prominent individuals (including Henry Kissinger and Arnold Schwarzenegger), in earlier decades few people took this clause seriously. Kissinger, asked if he was unhappy to be ineligible to become president, joked that there was nothing in the Constitution that would prevent him from becoming emperor. His ineligibility may have made him a more effective secretary of state, since people interested in becoming president themselves did not have to undermine him in order to enhance their own chances.

Some wits wondered if people delivered by Caesarian section were eligible.

Today, however, “birthers” and conspiracy theory devotees have made this requirement a major distraction from serious issues of public policy and from the actual strengths and weaknesses of presidential candidates. The requirement also conflicts with the widely shared value of equality before the law by establishing two classes of citizens, those eligible to be president and those not eligible.

Of course there are other constitutional requirements to be president, most notably the age requirement. But this requirement has minimal practical impact since few people younger than 35 are likely to be serious contenders.

Foreign-born individuals who are naturalized citizens might even be more qualified than the average natural born citizen. After all, they have been certified by the naturalization process to have actual knowledge about the American political system. Some recent candidates for president and vice president seemed to have some gaps in this regard.

There is an interesting contrast in the Constitution between the eligibility rules for the presidency and the total absence of any rules for Supreme Court members. For Supreme Court justices there is no age requirement, no requirement that they be lawyers, and no citizenship requirement. Mikhael Gorbachev would be a perfectly constitutional justice, as would a 14 year old like Malia Obama.

Our founders apparently trusted presidents and the senators who confirm judicial appointments to do the right thing. Is there any reason to think we cannot equally trust American voters when they select a president?

It is high time to get going on the necessary amendment. If we start soon, it could be ratified before Barack Obama, if re-elected, completes a second term. Eric Sevareid once compared being president with treading water while swatting bees. This amendment will remove a few bees from the bonnets of conspiracy theorists and reduce the number of bees distracting future presidents from getting their job done.

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This article has appeared in the (Adrian, Michigan) Daily Telegram and in the (Portland) Oregonian.

Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined

This is an outstanding book, so much so that I’ll probably buy a copy as soon as the paperback version comes out. Since I am a Certified Public Cheapskate, and already having trouble finding bookshelf space, this is high praise! I cannot remember ever buying a book after reading a library copy, except when our book discussion group later decided to use it.

Pinker correctly says that this analysis is “unsentimental history” based on “statistical literacy.”

A great strength of this work is Pinker’s extensive and persuasive documentation of how violent and nasty life in previous centuries was. The massive torture of people and animals in the past, which Pinker does not shrink from describing in gory detail, is sobering and depressing, but very educational.

Pinker admits that we are far from having arrived at utopia. But a number of graphs illustrate how the chances of being murdered or raped over the long haul have been greatly reduced from one century to another, and even the likelihood (expressed as a percentage of the current populations) of being killed in wars has gone way down.

The author capably explores a number of possible explanations for the improvements, accepting some and rejecting others.

Although Pinker’s thesis is very upbeat, he pointedly refrains from arguing that the trends toward improvement he documents will inevitably continue. He says our appropriate attitude should be “gratitude” rather than “optimism.”

This book would make a wonderful basis for reading and discussion in college political science classes, and its 700 pages (before footnotes kick in) would probably mean it would have to be the main text for a one-semester undergraduate class.

Phony Prices Give Corporations a Bad Name

The scandal about outrageous prices ($51 for two minutes!) paid by soldiers phoning the U.S. from a German airport is merely one more example of a more general problem: the proliferation of misleading prices advertised by businesses, or, as in this case, the absence of any announced price at all.

Years ago I was faculty advisor to a fraternity some of whose members cut down and stole a valuable blue spruce to use as a Christmas tree. They got caught. The tree’s owner said it was worth $600 and the guilty brethren coughed up this money to avoid being prosecuted . Buying a tree would have been cheaper.

Afterwards, I pointed out that one advantage of buying things is that you learn the value placed on them by their owners and, if you find that price excessive, you don’t buy. But this advice is worthless if the seller states a false price, or no price.

It is easy to find examples of false prices or no prices. At restaurants, for example, the waiter may announce specials of the day without informing diners of the prices, hoping that some diners will order without asking the price in order to avoid looking like cheapskates to others in their party.

On a grander scale, we find adjustable rate mortgages with low initial interest charges which always seem to go up, sometimes way up, after a year or two. Some of the recent housing meltdown was aggravated by interest increases that homeowners could not afford to pay.

Then there are hotels and car rental agencies which advertise rates without bothering to state the taxes which will be collected on top of these rates, taxes which are often substantial percentages of the advertised prices. Of course the customers are often from out of state and in no position to know what the state and local taxes are in the city in question. This is on top of the unannounced “fees” some even more unscrupulous hotels have been adding to their bills lately.

And how about TV cable or internet service providers offering bargain prices “for 6 months?” Or phone companies whose prices don’t include “taxes and fees?” Or TV commercials offering things for so many dollars “plus postage and handling.” Customers might be able to estimate postage costs, but “handling” is another matter, and sometimes exceeds the advertised price of the goods.

I won’t even comment on advertised airline fares or credit card interest rates!

Most of these practices are currently legal, but that does not make them right. One wonders if business executives are so obsessed with maximizing profits that they don’t care if they are giving their organizations a bad name. They obviously are not living by the Golden Rule.

It would be interesting to see if these problems could be ended by simple legislation without a lot of complications and loopholes requiring prices to be stated before any business transaction can occur, and requiring that all such prices be honest, “bottom-line” prices.

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This article has appeared in the (Portland, Oregon) Oregonian, and the (Adrian, Michigan) Daily Telegram.