A Tale of Two Stories

 Posted by Mike  Disasters and Tragedies, Issues, Racism, The Media  6 Responses »
Sep 302005
 

Anyone who has been reading leftfielder for awhile knows that one of our favorite topics is media bias. It seems that increasingly often, Americans are choosing their news sources not by their quality but by their bias. Conservatives subscribe to the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal and watch FOX News. Liberals subscribe to the Nation and the New York Times and watch CNN. I’ve beat my head against this particular wall on a number of previous occasions, and usually I am greeted with one of three responses. Some say that this self-selection of news is bad but there’s nothing we can do about it. Some say that the self-selection is actually a good thing, allowing people to view their own news in their own way. And others say it doesn’t matter one way or the other. I personally think it does matter, it is a bad thing, and that we can and should be raging against the machine. Moving beyond that point, however, I want to point out a couple examples of reporting lately that demonstrate, I feel, the need to move beyond bias. Sure, every reporter has their bias, every network has their bias, and those biases will come through when it comes to choosing images and music, deciding which stories get aired, how those stories are portrayed, etc. More importantly, we should be pushing for good, solid reporting. Good reporting may introduce bias; but it will also portray the real-world in its full complexity and allow people to draw their own conclusions despite the bias.

For instance, yesterday I saw an absolutely wonderful report on Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN (surprise, surprise, I’m one of the liberal types). Mr. Cooper introduced this story talking about FEMA’s wasteful spending, and how Congress was authorizing billions of tax-payer dollars to be spent in the gulf coast, but that there were serious questions regarding whether or not that money was actually getting to the appropriate people. The particular example of waste for this particular story was a cruise-ship that FEMA had rented from Carnival Cruise Lines. FEMA had paid Carnival an exorbitant amount to rent this ship for six months, in order to house evacuees. The boat was now sitting in dock in New Orleans with only about one-quarter of its potential capacity, meaning that the tax payer was paying thousands of dollars per week per family for this ship; and would be for the next five months. They showed a congressional hearing in which a Congressmen pointed out that they could have actually purchased cabins on the ship for these families and sent them on an actual 6-month cruise for as low as $600/week. Surely this was the kind of corporate giveaway and wasteful spending that the Bush Administration is taking so much flak for lately.

But thankfully the story didn’t end there. The reporter in New Orleans talks about wanting to actually go down to the ship and see what it was like, although they were unfortunately denied access to the boat. In the parking lot, however, they met a New Orleans firefighter, along with his wife and little daughter who were all staying on the ship. Suddenly the nature of the story changes. The firefighter talks about how he’s still needed in New Orleans, about how they lost their home during the hurricane, and how it’s been absolutely wonderful to be able to come home to his family every night rather than to have his family evacuated to Arkansas or Texas while he’s still there working. His wife then talks about how they have food and water and childcare on the boat, and its just been a great experience that has helped them cope. She’s seen so many families torn apart by the storm, while theirs gets to stay together and her husband can still serve the people of New Orleans. She finishes by saying that whatever its costing, its been worth every penny.

The reporter then flips the story back to Mr. Cooper, who asks some specific questions about the exact cost of it. It seems to him, then, that the real problem is that the boat isn’t full, and that FEMA hadn’t pre-negotiated the contract before the storm hit to allow for a better bargain, and perhaps some contingencies in case the boat wasn’t being fully utilized for six months. It also seems to him that perhaps FEMA was getting a little undue criticism; that they’ve been attacked for not doing enough after the disaster, and here is a case where they actually did something, and now they’re being attacked for that. These are, of course, the right conclusions to draw. Certainly money was being wasted on this boat; and if not now, in four months when the boat will be mostly empty as people start to return home. But the real problem was the failure to plan before the storm. Once the storm hit, at least in this case, FEMA’s actions were understandable. A story that had started as a biased critique of FEMA turned into an interesting look at the importance of disaster preparedness and the tough decisions that were forced upon an unprepared FEMA after the storm had hit. Good reporting moved the story beyond the bias to talk about the real world.

Compare that to the coverage of the comments by one of Regan’s education secretaries, William Bennett, on his talk-radio program. Bennett, who is staunchly pro-life, was discussing a recent book that claimed the recent drop in crime rates is related to the rise in abortion rates during the 1970s and 1980s. Bennett didn’t particular like this particular thesis, but ended up putting his foot in his mouth when trying to attack it: ”But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

Most of the reporting I’ve seen has stopped there, and of course the condemnation for these remarks has come from all sides, including the President himself. The reports I’ve seen have tended to leave out the next part of his comments, however. To quote the AP:

He went on to call that ”an impossible, ridiculous and morally
reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out,
these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.”

So, lets simplify this a little bit. An author argues that a high abortion rate will lead to a lower crime rates. After all, those who are most likely to get abortions are in the same demographic as those who are most likely to commit crimes: young, poor, and black. Bennett agrees that this basic correlation exists: there would be fewer crimes committed in this country if we killed all of those who were young, poor, and black. But Bennett also says that to do such a thing would be “impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible”.

So what exactly are we getting mad at Bennett for? In the first part, Bennett is simply stating a fact, a statistical correlation that seems likely to be true. Correlation does not imply causality, however; to state the fact that African Americans are more likely than whites to be convicted of crimes does not mean that there is any direct correlation between being black and having a predilection to commit crime. In fact, it seems to me to be just as damning towards a society that treats white and black suspects differently at every stage of the process, from initial contact with the police officers to the likelihood of conviction by a jury. And we certainly wouldn’t be getting mad at Bennett for saying that to actually encourage abortion of African Americans would be an evil thing to do.

It seems to me that we are mad at Bennett for exposing the skeletons in our own closet. His comments evoked memories of a time in this country where black sterilization actually occurred; where it was a common thought among certain segments of white America that we could eliminate the race problem in America by simply eliminating the black population in America. Sort of a genocide in slow-motion. His comments also remind us that our racial problems are not a thing of the past; that white and black Americans act differently and are treated differently, in ways that are hard to measure and for reasons that we don’t understand. Republicans want to ignore race as a problem and hope it goes away, while Democrats want to push affirmative action programs whose time has seemingly past. Neither solution is a good one, and we have yet to come up with a set of reasonable alternatives.

Unfortunately, this isn’t analysis that you are likely to get on the news. It’s all too easy to simply crucify Bennett as a racist for saying things that he didn’t actually say, and then to go on ignoring the problem. Good news would do what CNN did with the Carnival Cruise Ship story; dig a little deeper into the problem and figure out exactly what’s going on. Bennett’s comments make for fabulously terrible headlines (“Former Education Secretary Says We Can Reduce Crime By Aborting Black Babies”), and so that’s all you’re likely to get.

On the lighter side

 Posted by Doc Opp  U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Sep 292005
 

In an interesting tidbit, a friend of mine recently tipped me off to the fact that the House Majority Leader is Tom Delay, the House Majority Whip is Roy Blunt and one of the House Majority Deputy Whips is John Doolittle .

So, the republican leadership can be summed up as delay, blunt, and doolittle. I just thought that was funny.

Hammer Time Meets Texas Justice

 Posted by Mike  U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Sep 292005
 

House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) was indicted in Texas yesterday on conspiracy charges. Texas law forbids corporate campaign donations. According to the Travis County (which includes Austin) District Attorney Ronnie Earle, Delay and two other men conspired to funnel corporate funds to Texas lawmakers through the Republican National Committee during the 2002 campaign. Allegedly, the men raised $190,000 from various corporations with the intent of distributing that money into the campaigns of various Republican candidates for the Texas legislature. Knowing that the money could not be directly sent to the lawmakers, Rep. Delay allegedly gave the money to his contacts at the RNC with specific instructions that the money they been channelled to the Texas lawmakers that Delay specified.

Democrats are charging Republicans with creating a “culture of corruption” by citing this indictment, the investigation into insider trading by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), the ongoing investigation into the who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to Robert Novak, and the recent realization that many of Bush’s appointees haven’t been remotely qualified for their positions. Republicans, on the other hand, are countering that the above incidents are mostly unproven and all unrelated, and accusing Mr. Earle of being a partisan hack. All of this is of course whitewash; none of it actually has any bearing on whether or not Rep. Delay is guilty.

There are some interesting facets to this case, however. First, this case will prove an interesting litmus test on the Texas campaign finance laws, and presumably other, similar, laws in other states. Delay is charging that the Texas campaign finance laws under which he is being charged are unconstitutional, in which case he would have committed no wrong-doing even if the indictment is correct. Second, it is worth bearing in mind that whether or not the law, and the charges, are legitimate, that Rep. Delay has a history of borderline unethical behavior in order to get his candidates into office and his party’s agenda through Congress. He’s been admonished by the House ethics committee a number of times. This would not be the first time that Rep. Delay played fast and loose with the rules, nor would it be the first time that he was caught. It would only be the first time that the rules violation in question led to a felony indictment.

Most importantly, I’d like to stress to everyone that this is now an issue for a judge and jury to decide. Mr. Earle knows more about the Texas law in question than you, or me, or any talking head you’ll see on television, and he thought there was enough of a case to call a grand jury. That grand jury knows more about this case than any of the aforementioned arm-chair politicos, and they thought there was enough evidence to issue an indictment. And by the end of the trial, the judge and jury will know more about the guilt or innocence of Rep. Delay. Furthermore, it will be up to the people of Texas, specifically those who live south and southwest of Houston, to determine whether or not Rep. Delay deserves another term in office, no matter what the outcome of this trial may be. For better or worse, it is the American way.

Now That You’ve Put On The Sweater…

 Posted by Mike  Bush Administration, Environment, U.S. Politics  2 Responses »
Sep 282005
 

President Bush has finally decided that Americans need to start conserving energy. Better late than never, I suppose. However, assuming that the president is really serious about conservation, he needs to increase the federal gasoline tax by two or three dollars. I would recommend phasing it in over the next few years; how about a $0.02 increase in gasoline taxes each week for the next three years. Create exemptions or refunds for power plants, trucking companies, farmers, and other “worthy” groups, if you want to. If $0.02/week is too fast, then phase it in at $0.01/week over the course of five or six years. Just phase it in over time so that you give people a chance to adjust, to minimize the impact on people with fixed incomes or tight budgets. The exact details of the tax can be handled later, but for now lets just get the President on board with the idea.

Look, Americans need to fundamentally alter their lifestyles. We drive too much and we do it in absurdly large vehicles. We build neighborhoods in places, and in ways, that rely on our need to overdrive. We’ve created upper-class, suburban cultures where learning how to drive, or possibly getting that car on your sixteenth birthday, is a rite of passage. And when we buy cars, we consider it our right to get the largest, most inefficient car out there, because you never know, I may decide to someday buy a boat, in which case I’ll want a car with a big enough engine to tow it. It’s absolutely absurd.

Some people want to tighten regulations on manufacturers. Sure, you could force manufacturers to produce more efficient cars. But they’ll do so under extreme duress, finding as many loopholes in the law as they possibly can. Hence the Chrysler PT Cruiser’s designation as a light-truck because the designers made a couple, virtually unnoticeable, changes to the wheelbase and height of the car… er… SUV. Instead increase the gas tax and get consumers to force auto manufacturers to make real changes to their cars, to really increase the fuel efficiency of them.

Besides, in the long-run this will help the economy quite a bit. To be blunt, Americans spend too much and save too little. This creates all sorts of instability in currency markets, and makes the United States economy very vulnerable to bubbles and fads. Furthermore, right now we’re spending borrowed money, and if that well dries up, we’re in for a boat-load of trouble. By increasing the gasoline tax, it should dampen spending over all. Encourage people to stay in more and drive to the malls and the restaurants less. Get them to prioritize their budgets a little bit, and maybe even put a little more away for retirement. You never know, you might even start to wean the American consumer off of credit, just a little. And by the way, it’s not just me saying all of this; most of this analysis is paraphrased from things that the Economist has been saying for months.

And that’s not even counting the long-term benefits of a gasoline tax on the environment. Whether or not global warming produces hurricanes or tidal waves, even beyond all of the doomsday scenarios of coastal flooding, taking care of the environment is just the right thing to do. It’s also the Christian thing to do; having stewardship of and dominion over the earth doesn’t mean that we get free license to do as we please, it means we are taking care of God’s property, and he’ll expect an accounting.

So there you go, Mr. President; you’ve decided to join the HOV lane using, sweater wearing, conservation crowd, so now you know what to do next. Because this is one case where a couple nice speeches and empty symbolic gestures won’t get the job done.

Believing is Seeing

 Posted by Mike  Creation and Evolution, Issues  21 Responses »
Sep 262005
 

The biggest problem with the “evolution debate” can best be described with reference to the following statement made in the New York Times this morning: “Evolution finds that life evolved over billions of years through the processes of mutation and natural selection, without the need for supernatural interventions.” The first part of this statement is more or less correct. Evolution does theorize (and I use that term with its scientific and not its colloquial meaning) that life on earth has evolved over billions of years through the processes of mutation and natural selection. The real problem with this statement is the second part, the “without the need for supernatural interventions”. The statement is misleading and counter-productive, and it is the main cause for debate.

Look, conservative (religiously, not politically) Christians generally have three problems with the theory of evolution: the age of the earth, the specialness of mankind, and the exclusion of God. The age of the earth, and of life on earth, is actually a topic of large debate among Biblical theologians. What does Genesis mean when it counts off the days of creation? Is that a metaphysical distinction used to give the Ancient Hebrews a sense of the order of creation, or is that a literal designation that means 24-hour (or close to it) periods of time? How accurate are the various Biblical genealogies? How many generations are left out of them, if any? How long was Adam in the Garden of Eden? Were there other people there as well? Any wannabe Old Testament theologian worth his salt will have opinions on all of these questions, of course, but ultimately they are just opinions. In fact, they are pretty established questions for debate among Christians and only the most hard-line fundamentalists would go so far as to say that their answer to these questions is the only Christian answer. If this were the only problem with Evolution, the theory would only butt against Christianity to roughly the same degree as did the idea that the earth revolves around the sun.

The second problem, the specialness of man, derives from various Biblical discussions on how mankind is made in the image of God, and how Adam and Eve’s creation was somehow different, and more special, than the creation of the other animals. As a result, many Christians take offense at the notion that humanity is simply a few short evolutionary steps away from a chimpanzee. Of course, any Biblical scholar will tell you that our being made in the image of God refers to our soul and/or our ability for higher cognitive thought, and not to our physical bodies. I firmly believe in my own specialness in God’s eyes, and in the specialness of mankind, no matter from where God got the genetic material to craft our bodies. There are, of course, a lot of Christians who would disagree with me on this point, but again, I don’t think that evolution would be such the cultural flash point that it is if this were the only conflict between the scientific theory and the Biblical creation accounts.

The real problem is the perception, held by many people on both sides of the evolution/creation debate, that the Theory of Evolution is an atheistic theory that precludes God. This is the fundamental premise behind Intelligent Design (ID). ID says that life is too complicated to have occurred randomly, and therefore there must have been some intelligence pushing the world to look like it does. ID gives no guidance on the nature of the God or Gods that designed life. To do so would push it back into the realm of creationism. And ID gives no guidance on how the God or Gods acted. The push to get ID taught in public schools stems from the belief that evolution precludes any action for God and is therefore countermanding any Biblical teaching that the children are getting at home or in Sunday School. ID at least opens the door to that teaching by allowing for the existence of a creator(s), which allows the parents to fill in the blanks about the nature of that creator when the children get home from school.

The lie to all of this, however, is that no such backdoor is needed, because it already exists. Evolution is silent on the existence of a creator. Evolution is silent on why evolution takes place, outside of rough ideas that life responds to its natural environment and that mutations seem to take place somewhat randomly.

Personally, I already believe in some version of intelligent design. All Christians do. I look at my life and I see God working on a daily basis. I look at the lives of my friends and family, and I see God working in their lives as well. I think about the complexity of who I am, of my mind, body, and soul, and I believe that God must have had a hand in making me who I am. Other people, however, will look at my life and see no such thing. They will see natural processes at work where I see supernatural ones. They will come up with what to them are perfectly reasonable explanations for how I am what I am, and how the world is what it is, without reference to God at all. But that’s the nature of faith. The faithful see God working all around them all the time, whereas the unfaithful do not. The Bible talks about the unfaithful blinding themselves to God’s work. The same thing happens with evolution. Personally, when I have evolutionary processes described to me, and I look around and see the results of those evolutionary processes around me, I think that of course God must be involved. Of course He must have had a hand in creating our world. Others don’t, and that’s their prerogative. But I can believe that without being taught about ID in school, because I was taught about faith and about the nature of God at home and in church.

In other words, if you think that evolution is driving kids away from faith in God, or that science and religion are antithetical, then you ought to ask yourself what you are really teaching those children. God gave us the minds and the drive to push for scientific inquiry; the desire to know about His creation and to figure out how it works. If you see your children being driven away from God by their science classes, then you first ought to ask yourself if you have really taught your children to have faith in God, or if instead you have taught them to hold dogmatically to your set of beliefs. On the other side, for any scientist to say that evolution disproves or precludes God is just to expose your ignorance of the power of faith, and to do their own cause disservice. We don’t need to teach intelligent design as an alternate to evolution, because intelligent design is already there for any who want to see it.

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