Oregon State University Should Not Abandon Profitable Investments

Ken Winograd  [“It’s wrong for OSU to profit from climate destruction”] overlooks significant details that undermine all but one part of his argument.

If OSU sells all its stock in fossil fuel industries,  it will reduce neither the sales nor the profits of those industries.  It will have no effect on the sales one way or the other, and it will simply redirect dividends and capital gains to the people who buy the stock from OSU.  The investments  purchased by the OSU Foundation to replace the divested stock will be less profitable,  or the Foundation would already have made the switch for purely economic rather than moral reasons. 

Winograd in effect concedes this point when he tells us that “the question of divestment must be shaped by moral concerns and not the bottom line.” 

Why, then,  divest?  Says Winograd:  “The goal of divestment is to stimulate a synergy of activism,  to affect a seismic shift in public opinion—that drastic changes in public policy are needed now.”  In other words,  divestment would be a massive publicity stunt! 

I would like to make a friendly suggestion about an even more dramatic publicity stunt that would actually reduce fossil fuel consumption in the U.S. and that would reduce OSU income from its fossil industry investments by a smaller amount. 

Several times a year tens of thousands of people migrate to Corvallis to attend OSU football games.  Their cars and RVs burn large amounts of gasoline.  For night games Reiser Stadium is brightly lit with floodlights that use large amounts of electricity, some of which is produced by burning coal and natural gas---fossil fuels.  When the team travels to other schools for games,  its buses or airplanes burn diesel or jet fuel—fossil fuels.   And don’t forget the electricity consumed when people run TV sets to watch televised games.   

Do you see what I am driving at?   If OSU were to abolish its football team,  it would actually reduce fossil fuel use in the United States.   It would reduce the serious brain damage that football players risk every time they take the field.   And it would also be a REAL publicity stunt.   If other universities imitated OSU,  so much the better. 

To be sure, OSU would lose the income earned by the football program,  but this will not reduce the money available for teaching and research, the core missions of a university.  

As a serious student of American politics,  culture, and higher education,  I predict that OSU will not take me up on this proposal.  We can’t push morality too far,  after all, especially when it interferes with our entertainment! 

But while we are waiting for the ecological millennium,  I hope OSU won’t dump profitable investments, reducing income that it could put to good uses educating our youth and researching greener power sources.  Winograd claims that “if it is wrong to wreck the climate, it is wrong to profit from that wreckage.”  But until better energy technology is developed,  fossil fuel companies will continue to make money, and if money is going to be made anyhow it might as well go to OSU. 

Why a single payer system would be better than Obamacare

Recent efforts to defund Obamacare evoked hot air from both sides of the aisle.   Perhaps it is now time for serious talk instead of talking points.

While it has some good aspects, there are four principal problems with Obamacare: 

1.  It is outrageously complex,  confronts individuals and employers with decisions they are poorly equipped to  make, and requires government to pull together vast amounts of information in determining eligibility for subsidies. 

2.  It leaves millions uninsured,  especially since the Supreme Court eviscerated Medicaid expansion by allowing states to ignore it without losing federal funding for their existing Medicaid programs. 

3.  It perpetuates employment-based insurance  (while undermining it for some).  People who become too sick to work will continue to lose their insurance, and their loss of income will make it impossible to buy insurance privately without prolonged paperwork at the exchanges.

4.  Under  Obamacare  insurers are gaming the system,  offering low prices on the exchanges but restricting coverage to very limited “networks” of doctors and hospitals,   making it harder for people to get care. 

There is an obvious  solution to these problems:  a taxpayer-funded single-payer insurance system, “Medicare For All.”   

Medicare For All could be very simple, with low administrative costs.  Individuals could participate without having to make complicated decisions requiring them to consult accountants,  lawyers . . . and psychiatrists. 

The system would cover everyone without any exceptions, and would allow overlapping systems like Medicaid to be phased out.

People wouldn’t depend on employment  for insurance.  Those too sick to work would not lose coverage.  Employers would have no incentive to move towards part-time work or to avoid hiring older people, whose medical costs tend to be higher.

Under single-payer there would be no  “out of network” doctors and hospitals.  People could chose doctors and hospitals to their taste and convenience. 

The major political obstacle to a single payer system is that it would require higher taxes.  But the average person’s out of pocket costs for insurance would be reduced by more than their taxes would increase, leaving more in their pockets.    

Single payer eliminates payment of personal insurance premiums.  It also eliminates the premiums now paid by employers,  money by necessity subtracted from the wages they pay.  (That is why low paid workers are not provided with insurance, since their wages cannot be reduced below the legal minimum, and why the employer mandate drives employers of low-paid workers to make them part-time to  avoid insuring them.)

To retain qualified workers, employers will have to redistribute these savings as increased wages. 

By greatly reducing administrative costs and eliminating private profits and the magnificent salaries of insurance executives,  single payer’s total cost would be less than Obamacare and less than the pre-Obamacare system.  This lower system cost is why the average person will retain more in-pocket even after paying increased taxes.   

Having given up on defunding, John Boehner now says he will continue fighting Mr. Obama’s health care law, but in a different manner.  Perhaps he should consider supporting a replacement that would incorporate the conservative values of simplicity,  uniformity, and efficiency: a single payer system paid for with taxes,  Medicare For All.

**********

This op-ed has appeared in the Adrian Daily Telegram.

Announcing a new free anthem

FREE ANTHEM:   I have just posted a new anthem on my website written to observe the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:  Come Walk With Me.   Like all my music,  this anthem can be printed and used without any charge. 

Congress should save us from a president's unwise line-drawing

President Obama, by announcing that he will not bomb Syria  unless Congress authorizes it, has done the right thing.

I was deeply skeptical about claims that Assad’s military were the people who had used these weapons,  but the evidence now does indicate that the Syrian government was the culpable party. 

Even so,  this does not mean that the United States should poke its finger into this hornet’s nest.  Although Obama’s earlier drawing of a “red line” seems to require “doing something”  or risk making the U.S. look like a paper tiger,   there are weighty reasons why we should not intervene.    Obama’s Saturday announcement gives Congress the ability to help him escape from the corner into which he had unwisely painted himself.

What good would it do us,  or the people of Syria,  if the U.S. engages in a “limited” strike by cruise missiles?  We cannot target the chemical weapons,  even in the unlikely event we really know where they are all stored.  Destroying chemical weapons without endangering nearby populations is difficult.  Oregonians  may  remember the tribulations of  the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility , which   just finished its work a couple of  years ago.

American bombs cannot bring democracy to Syria,  nor can they be justified on humanitarian grounds.  Assad’s regime is indeed horrible,  but destroying a horrible regime is not likely to improve life for the population suffering under its rule.  Saddam Hussein’s regime was horrible,  and Husssein killed a lot of “his own” people to preserve his rule,  but now that he is gone life in Iraq is even more precarious as various factions that he had been able to repress are now free to bomb weddings,  funerals,  and everywhere else innocent civilians gather. 

Of course Mr. Obama says our intent in bombing is not to bring down Assad, which would seem to conflict with our general professed desire that he be brought down, and in any event does not mean that bombing won’t help bring him down.

The government forces lately seem to be winning.  Our bombs, by weakening the government’s hand,  could delay the end of the civil war and prolong the humanitarian tragedy.  The population of Syria would best be served by an end to the war and all of its killings and disruptions,  whichever side wins.  And a decisive victory by the government would be more likely to stick than one by the rebels,  who if they won would still have to fight it out to see which faction among them would control things. 

If the rebels win,  they will then control the chemical weapons, and might provide them to the terrorist allies of some of  the rebel factions. 

All in all, the Syrian situation suggests once again that the U.S. should refrain from encouraging violent overthrows of existing regimes,  no matter how bad.  We should instead encourage reformers.   Even very bad regimes can be reformed from within, as we saw in the U.S.S.R. and South Africa. 

If Congress understands America’s true interests,  it will not support President Obama’s desire to bomb Syria.  But in any event,  Obama---for whom I do not regret voting even though he has made mistakes---should be commended for recognizing his constitutional duty to get Congressional authorization before engaging in acts of war where no emergency requires immediate action. 

************

This piece has run in the Adrian (Michigan) Daily Telegram.

Is C-SPAN Coverage of Congress Really a Good Idea?

I used to think that C-SPAN,  which televises the House and Senate,  congressional hearings, and the like,  was an unmitigated blessing.  

Lately,  though,  I have had second thoughts.  C-SPAN has many wonderful programs (Book TV,  the series on first ladies, etc.).  But its coverage of Congress is causing fundamental damage to the ability of Congress to do its job.

C-SPAN televises sessions of  House and Senate in which only a handful of the members  are present.  Speeches are addressed,  not to the other members of Congress, who are not present,  but to the TV audience.  This makes sense for members who love free publicity  but takes time which speakers might have used consulting with other members of their houses,  with staff, or with constituents. 

C-SPAN sometimes covers hearings in which only committee members of one  party are present.  These hearings are orchestrated to score points with the public for one side of an issue or the other.  They don’t contribute to serious negotiations among committee members about  what needs to be done.
Since all public policies have both advantages and disadvantages,  simplistic analysis assuming that some proposals are all benefits and no costs or all costs and no benefits must be avoided.  Yet that is exactly what many of the speeches and hearings telecast by C-SPAN provide us with.

I think that C-SPAN should stop televising sessions of the Senate and House except on the rare occasions when quorums are present and serious business is being done.  It should stop covering committee hearings in which both parties are not represented and in which there is no serious discussion of both the pros and cons of proposed legislation.  This would give it time to broadcast more of its other programming,  which is often more substantive,  and it would help push Congress back towards the functionality it has lost in recent decades.

Such a pullback by C-SPAN  would have some costs for democracy,  which requires an informed electorate.  But remember,  all policies have both costs and benefits.  The benefit here would be a Congress that is more functional and whose members spend their time interacting more productively.  This would be a good tradeoff.

It has long been understood that serious negotiations must be conducted in private,  so that negotiators are not trapped into hardened initial positions by fear of losing face or being accused of inconsistency.  The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was not open to press or public,  though the results of that Convention were of course made public when the proposed Constitution was sent out for ratification.  President Woodrow Wilson famously called in international relations for “open covenants,  openly arrived at.”  But  experience teaches that diplomatic negotiations are more fruitful when conducted in secret, so that we get “open covenants,  secretly arrived at.”   

If members of Congress want to continue giving speeches to empty chambers in order to get something printed in the Congressional Record,  which they have long done,  let them do so.  But don’t give them additional incentives for such behavior by putting them on live TV.  The time has come to help Congress resume its traditional functionality by treating its members to a healthy dose of benign neglect by C-SPAN. 

Mountains and Molehills: Why Data Mining Makes Sense

Mountains and Molehills:  Why Data Mining Makes Sense

Twice in the last ten years our credit card company asked if we had made purchases flagged by their software as deviations from our usual patterns.  Both times they were right; we had made no such transactions. Visa  promptly gave us a new account number. I was delighted with their data-mining , even though it "snooped" on my transaction patterns. What skin off my teeth was that "invasion of privacy"?

After 9-11 the F.B.I.,  which had noticed some of the unusual activity by the people planning the attack,  was criticized for failing to “connect the dots.”   If those dots had been connected federal authorities might have seen the pattern suggested by the connections and headed off the 9-11 disaster.  Critics of the recently revealed data-mining operations forget  that it is impossible to connect dots that have not been collected in the first place. 

In the present case the dots are individual calls from one telephone number to another.   Federal agencies have been collecting records of all these calls.  Responding to this,  the New York Times recently editorialized that Congress should enact  “legislation to limit the collection of call records and the monitoring of Internet traffic to that of people suspected of terrorism, ending the mass warehousing of everyone’s data.”     

This editorial misses the whole concept of data mining,  in which computers scan immense amounts of data (like which phone number phones which phone number, when, and for how long) and pick up patterns which suggest activity  meriting further investigation. Limiting collection of this information to calls associated with people already under suspicion would make it much less likely to detect people who are not under suspicion but ought to be.

Remember that the data about phone calls being swept up by government agencies does not include what people are saying in those calls.  After patterns have been detected,  authorities may place wiretaps on specific people,  but only after getting specific authorization by a court.  

Of course this data mining harms would-be terrorists,  but aside from that what harm does the so-called invasion of people’s privacy cause anybody?  What difference does it make in our lives?

“Big data” is a recent phenomenon made possible by modern computers,  which can scan immense amounts of information and detect patterns which could never be found by finite human investigators. Data mining techniques are already being used by astronomers,  traffic control people,  medical researchers, and in many other fields.  They are improving our ability to understand the universe,   make traffic flow more smoothly, and treat diseases.  There is no reason why we should not also exploit this technology
to improve the security of our people. 

The private groups which have declared war against the United States do not hesitate to use modern technology (cell phones,  the internet, explosives, etc.) to further their plans.  There is no sense in placing artificial limits on our own ability to use technology to limit the damage they can do.

In older wars people were conscripted, shipped off to fight, placed under wage controls, taxed more, and endured rationing. Surely the minimal "invasions of privacy"  caused by the programs recently revealed pale in comparison.

**************

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

Edward Snowden: A different possible interpretation of his actions

This piece models how the same facts can be interpreted in very different ways, and is also something of a parody of conspiracy theory but with the twist that the hypothetical conspiracy (which is admittedly unlikely) is by the good guys and for a legitimate purpose. 

Edward Snowden:   A  different possible interpretation of his actions

Decades ago I read a novel,  Typewriter in the Sky,  by L. Ron Hubbard (who later founded “Dianetics”).  I remember this scifi novel only dimly—and won’t read it again to refresh my memory. Reading it once was bad enough!  But the general idea was that its protagonist falls into a  universe recognizably created by a work of fiction being written by a friend who is a very bad novelist.  Our hero—who can hear a typewriter clacking away up in the sky---is horrified, since he knows how his friend’s mind works and realizes he is in for a terrible fate.

I recalled this novel recently while thinking about the Snowden affair.  It seems to me that the Snowden story looks like a very bad novel..  

Why, for example,  would American authorities make such a fuss about Edward Snowden’s revelations?  The NSA data-mining of connections between phone numbers, after all,  is just taking common sense advantage of opportunities presented by modern computers.  Since the mining does not capture the contents of the communications flowing through the telephone networks,  it does not violate anybody’s privacy in those communications.

Why did Chinese authorities with influence in Hong Kong allow someone supposedly wanted by China’s leading trade partner and implicit ally to fly off to Moscow, and why are Russian authorities being so cagey about Snowden?   

To make sense of the Snowden affair might be easier if we look at it from a very different angle.  No doubt this interpretation is improbable,  but even its bare possibility is worth thinking about:  what if Snowden is loyally playing the leading role in a scenario staged to bag a large number of would-be terrorists?

In this scenario,  Snowden made his revelations about NSA data mining,  not in defiance of our government,  but at its behest.  In this scenario his flight to Hong Kong and then to Moscow and seeking political asylum are merely a magnificent publicity stunt.  The goal of the stunt would be draw attention to his revelations and thereby scare terrorists into changing how they communicate.  Such changes,  which NSA computers could spot,  might identify plotters who otherwise could have  avoided detection.   

At the very least this plot might frighten some terrorists into using less efficient methods of communicating with each other, a goal worthwhile in itself.    

If Snowden’s “leaks” were actually part of an official operation,  we would want to commend him if the true story can ever be told.  So perhaps we should avoid rushing to judgment about him.

It would be interesting to know how China and Russia would fit into this scenario.  Are they in the dark about Snowden,  or are they knowingly playing their own part in the operation?  After all,  Russia and China have legitimate concerns about terrorism and could have good reasons to cooperate with us.

Of course such a plot would be a massive deception,  but deception in policy matters is not always bad.  The successful landings in Normandy on D-Day,  for example,  were helped by elaborate (and successful) efforts to bamboozle the Nazis into thinking the attack was going to be elsewhere. 

Readers may wonder if publishing speculation about a plot might sabotage the plot, if one actually exists.  But by now any terrorist changes in communication patterns stimulated by Snowden’s revelations—whether or not there was a plot--- will already have happened and the NSA computers will have safely recorded all the dots that need to be connected.  

Plot or no plot,  I wish them luck in connecting those dots.

*************

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