This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #136, on the subject of Recounting Nonsense.
Many people are upset that Donald Trump won, or conversely that Hillary Clinton lost, the Presidential race. There have been quite a few suggestions even now for how this loss could be turned to victory. Not surprisingly, one of those calls is for several states to recount their ballots to determine whether, after all, Hillary might have won. President Obama has brushed off such a suggestion, saying that the integrity of the system should not be questioned at this point, and the Clinton camp had decided not to pursue any recounts because they had no evidence of any irregularities. However, a petition has now been filed in one state which Trump took which had been expected to go to Clinton, with announcements that two more are pending–and although Clinton’s people are joining in the petitions to protect their own legal interests, they are not the filers.
The irony is that the person filing these petitions is Green party candidate Jill Stein. That is particularly ironic, because Stein’s candidacy is one of the reasons Clinton lost.
Take Wisconsin, a state in which the final count gives Trump 1,409,467 votes, 47.9% of all votes cast, and Clinton 1,382,210, 46.9% of all votes cast. Libertarian Gary Johnson placed a distant third with 106,442 votes, 3.6%, and Stein was an even more distant fourth, 30,980 votes, 1.1%. The Green Party stands to the left of the Democratic party, particularly on environmental issues, and had everyone who voted for Stein voted for Clinton instead, she would have received 1,413,190, about 48% of the vote, taking the state by an even more narrow margin than that by which she lost it. Of course, not everyone who voted for Stein would have voted for Clinton, many of them simply not voting, others selecting other candidates–but it is at least arguable that Stein cost Clinton Wisconsin.
(It should also be noted that if everyone who voted Libertarian voted Republican instead, Trump would have had more than half the votes in the state. The Third Party Problem impacts both parties, not always equally.)
It has been announced that a petition will be filed in Pennsylvania before the deadline. Here the third party impact is less clear: Trump took 2,912,941 votes, 48.8%; Clinton took 2,844,705 votes, 47.6%. Stein only took 48,912 votes, a mere 0.8%, not enough to put Clinton ahead but enough to narrow the gap sufficiently to make it more likely a recount would reverse the outcome. (Here Libertarian Johnson took only 2.4%, 142,653 votes, which again would have put Trump over the 50% mark had they gone to him.)
Michigan is close enough that some observers have not considered it settled, and a recount almost makes sense for the loser: Trump’s 2,279,805 votes is 47.6% against Clinton’s 2,268,193, 47.3%–and again, Stein’s 50,700 votes is 1.1% of the total, more than enough that it would have put Hillary in first place (but again Johnson’s 3.6%–173,057 votes–would have put Trump over the 50% mark).
It is overall a bad bet; Clinton must claim Pennsylvania, or she cannot overturn the election, and she must also claim either Wisconsin or Michigan. Those two states together are not enough electoral votes to reverse the result, but Pennsylvania is not enough by itself without at least one or the other of those. It could happen, but it’s very unlikely.
Stranger things have happened, but probably not this.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #135, on the subject of What Racism Is.
This began as a Facebook thread, but found its way here for several reasons. One is that the issue is important, and in the hierarchy of ephemera that comprises the Internet a web log post has a longer life than a Facebook thread, and so reaches more people over a longer period of time. Another is that most (not all) of those participating in the Facebook thread disagreed; either I failed to communicate the essential point adequately, or there is a fundamental disagreement about the nature and definition of “racism”.
President Clinton’s Initiative on Race
An “ism”, generally, is a set of beliefs or sometimes attitudes expressing itself as a world view and thus impacting the actions of the “ist”, that is, the one embracing the “ism”, or tending toward “ist” actions, those which express the “ism”. There are many–Marxism, socialism, and Nazism; legalism, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Taoism. The one perhaps nearest in kind to racism is sexism, and they share some similar features. Both involve using a biological category as a basis for distinctions that are generalizations about the group applied to individuals within it. Sexism is the belief or attitude that one sex is better at some things than the other, when those specific supposed advantages are not specifically linked to the essential elements that are the basis for the distinction between the two sexes. The statement that only women are designed to carry and deliver offspring is not in itself sexist because that is part of the definition of what it is to be female, in humans; the assertion that they therefore should stay home and have babies is sexist, because it places a different obligation on women than on men which is separate from that biological distinction. (It is different in sea horses and some other aquatic life, in which once the female has handled the fertilization of the eggs she provided, she passes them to the male for safekeeping until birth.) It is sexist to assert that men are smarter than women, in part because that is not one of the defining distinctions but in larger part because it is simply not true–men are better on average at certain cognitive tasks (especially space relations), women at others (especially linguistic abilities), and overall intellect is about equal at both the means and the extremes. More difficult is the assertion that men have greater upper body strength–a statement that is true at the means and the extremes, that the male torso is built slightly differently than the female with upper body strength in view, but which is not true in every individual case. So sexism is the attitude that one sex is better than the other in specific ways which are not actually linked to sexual differences, and it can point either direction–the statement that men are terrible at relationships and commitments is sexist not because it isn’t true as a generalization that women are better at such things than men, but because it is not universally true either that all men are bad at these nor that all women are good. A misandrist is just as much a sexist as a misogynist.
Thus a racist is someone who thinks in racial categories and believes that everyone who shares a common racial ancestry automatically has specific traits universal to that group which are not part of the defining traits of that group. Obviously it is true that there are some genetic factors that unify individual races; it is equally true that the pure genome of every race is vanishing from the world (blue eyes have become more rare as a percentage of the population than ever before). It is not sexist racist to state that blacks all have high quantities of melanin in their skin, hair, and eyes, because that is part of the biological definition of negroid anatomy. It is racist to say that all blacks have great rhythm and musical ability, even if it is intended in a complimentary or admiring sense, because it is an untrue generalization based on race.
There is, however, an attitude or notion that only whites can be racist, and that all whites are. Part of my point is that this attitude is itself racist: it generalizes about a group based on racial distinctions to assert that some defect is true about all individual members of the group, and further asserts that it is not true about anyone who is not a member of that group. Racism is seen as a specifically and universally white characteristic. That is not true. Ask any Mexican in the United States whether there are racist blacks. Hispanic subgroups–Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans–are often racist toward each other. There has long been racism between various white racial subgroups. The grandmother of a college friend of mine was known to have said, “Ya, but vat is a Svede but a Norvegian vith his brains knocked out?” All those Italian jokes we heard as kids are racist; the obstacles they and other immigrant groups such as the Irish faced in employment were expressions of racism against whites–and to the black radio commentator who once opined that all they needed to do was change their names, even those who at that time were not racist could identify ethnic backgrounds by everything from idiolect to pigmentation. The racism against Jews seemingly knows no racial barriers, as they are stereotyped by people of every national and ethnic background, often to the point of violent persecution–and in the main, Jews are white.
In Verse Three, Chapter One: The First Multiverser Novel, in the chapter in which Lauren Hastings meets Joe Kondor, when he opines that the reason she failed to notice that the bird people populating their new world were segregated based on the colors of their feathers is that she is white, it surprises her that he would think it discriminatory of her not to have noticed such a connection, but not to have thought it discriminatory to suggest that it was because she was white. That was because she was not racist–racial categories do not matter to her at all–and he is, but does not recognize it about himself.
When Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States, many thought this marked the end of racism in this country, because a black man had been elected President. Unfortunately, that assessment is itself, once again, racist: if it were true that racism had ended, no one would have observed that the man was black. My children were not at all racist, and my wife and I often found it difficult to elicit from them whether their schoolteachers or classmates were white or black without asking directly, because it was not a category by which they identified people; they offered height, weight, age, hair and eye color, but not race. Not being racist means that in your own mind race is not more than a category of biology which is irrelevant outside of a few mostly medical matters (for example, sickle cell anemia is a genetic disorder specifically linked to the black genome). Yet after his election racism continued, even demonstrated by his own family. We have previously observed how Michelle Obama’s Target story demonstrates her own racism, that she believes a short white woman would have asked her to get something off the top shelf not because she, at five foot eleven inches, is tall, but because she is black. The assumption was, once again, that the woman was racist because she was white, when any child would have recognized that the only racism here comes from that assumption, not from a short person asking a tall person for help.
All of which brings us to the West Virginia story which started this.
I am old enough to remember that it was fairly common, at least in my part of the country, to refer to someone as a “big ape” to mean that he was large and physically awkward or clumsy–lacking physical grace would be a polite way to say it. That’s what the expression means to me, and if I were to call someone an ape–which is, frankly, just plain rude to call anybody anything insulting–that would be my intent. I don’t think that were I to use that particular insult, I would make any distinction based on race, because the expression does not mean that to me and never did.
I am educated enough to know that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was generally believed, even by many abolitionists, that Negroes were not human, but were the most advanced primates to come out of Africa, eminently trainable and even able to understand and mimic speech. It was as it were an article of faith among the slavery faction, to the point that one Civil War Confederate general wrote in his journal that were it to be demonstrated that blacks could fight in the armies of either side, the South would lose on principle, as that would prove they were in fact human, not domesticated animals, and that it therefore was morally wrong to enslave them. I know that the epithet of being an “ape” or a “monkey” was still in use in the early twentieth century to convey the belief that blacks were sub-human. I have never in my now somewhat longish life actually heard anyone so use it. I would not first think of that meaning were I to hear someone call someone an “ape”, because in my experience the other meaning is still in common use and this one is not, any more than were I to hear someone identified as a “bitch” I would take that in its early meaning of a profligate woman instead of the modern sense of a nasty one.
It might, I suppose, matter that I have lived much of my life north of the Mason-Dixon Line–but only because the men who drew the line had it turn south from the southern edge of Pennsylvania along the western border of Delaware, and so placed New Jersey on the northern side completely. The line along the southern edge of Pennsylvania, if continued eastward, would pass through our state; we are in that sense on the border, and there are enough “rednecks” in the southern reaches of the state that the Confederate flag is not completely absent from personal displays.
Yet it should equally be noted that that same line follows along the northern edge of West Virginia–it, too, is a border state, albeit a southern one, and part of it extends north of that line as defined by the southern edge of Pennsylvania. Where I live in New Jersey today is south of a substantial portion of West Virginia. Historically West Virginia was a slave state and New Jersey a free state, but that was over one and a half centuries ago. West Virginia is not “deep south” like Alabama, and New Jersey is not “remote north” like Vermont and Massachusetts. An expression that is common or uncommon here is probably similarly used as near here as West Virginia. There might still be people in the country using the derogation “ape” to refer to someone as sub-human, but it is the less likely usage.
From this, it appears to me to be at least plausible that the woman in West Virginia who described First Lady Michelle Obama as “an ape in heels” did not mean it in a racial sense, but only in the sense that the nearly six foot tall basketball-playing woman lacks the sort of grace we had in Jacqueline Kennedy or Nancy Reagan or Betty Ford. I can imagine that after she said it via Twitter an electronic gasp passed through the audience and she thought, as many who accidentally say things they did not realize had sexual implications until after the words were out of their mouths, “What did I say?” Maybe someone had to call her attention to the racial meaning of that slur, which was not in her thoughts at all. Then, realizing how people would take what she said, she blushed brilliantly and retracted it.
I could be entirely wrong. People who know this woman might be aware of facts unknown to us, perhaps that she is terribly racist and probably would call a black woman an “ape” in the sense of “sub-human primate”. They might as easily know that she is not at all racist and would have said something like that completely oblivious to its racial implications. We cannot know whether this white woman made a comment she knew was a racial slur, or whether she meant something differently insulting about a first lady who is perhaps athletic but not graceful.
Which brings the second half of the point. Most readers, and indeed the media generally, leapt to the conclusion that because this was said by a white woman about a black woman, it must have been a racial slur. That, though, requires thinking about the situation in racial categories–that is, judging it from a racist perspective. If the comment had been made by a black woman, would we not conclude that she meant awkward? If it had been made about a white man, would we be shouting that calling him an “ape” was clearly a racist attack on his status as a human being? In point of fact, to reach the conclusion that this comment “must have been” racist, you must work from the assumption that because it was said by a white person living south of the Mason-Dixon Line (as it was actually drawn) about a black person, the white person is by default racist and intended it as a racial slur. However, the statement “all whites are racist” is the attribution of a negative characteristic to all members of a class defined by race–and thus a racist statement by definition–and you do not cause it to cease to be racist by limiting it to “all whites living south of the Mason-Dixon Line”.
So I do not know whether the woman who stated that Michelle Obama was “an ape in heels” is racist–but I do know that all the people who, knowing no more than that a white woman in West Virginia made such a statement are insisting that it must have been intended as a racial slur because of who said it, certainly are. If they were not, it would not have occurred to them that the race of the speaker in any way impacted the intent of the statement.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #131, on the subject of The Fat Lady Sings.
The votes are in, the polls are closed, the counting has nearly been completed, and it is clear that political outsider Republican Donald Trump has received more than enough electoral votes to become the next President of the United States. It’s over.
The losers are sore; they don’t want it to be over. Consummate politician and Washington insider Democrat Hillary Clinton received slightly more of the popular vote (less than one half of one percent, six hundred thirty thousand eight hundred seventy-seven (630,877) more votes than Trump out of one hundred twenty-seven million five hundred ninety-two thousand one hundred seventy-six (127,592,176) cast). There are a lot of people who think that this means she should be the next President. Some of them are petitioning for Electors pledged to Trump to “jump ship” and vote for Clinton instead, even if they are required by state law to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Break the law, they say; pay the fine and save the country from this despicable Republican. However, a lot of voters want this “despicable Republican” to be President, and there is a degree to which his victory is a vindication for one of the principle concepts of the Electoral College.
We’ve discussed the Electoral College before, in Coalition Government, and to a lesser degree before that in The Birth Certificate: Ballot Requirements; it is that system by which we the people do not vote for the President but for the Electors who will vote for the President. Ironically, it appears that the Framers of the Constitution wanted it to be a system that usually failed–the way the text is written, if several people are running for President it is unlikely that one of them would receive a majority of Electors, which means that the Legislature would get to pick who it wanted for its Executive (that is, “the person who executes the directives of the legislature”) from the shortlist provided by the College giving us the sort of “executive does what the ruling party wants” streamlined government typical of the Parliament/Prime Minister structures of other countries. It rarely happens that way, because very early we learned that a two-party system results in one of the candidates usually getting fifty-percent-plus-one of the votes in the College, and so most people vote for one of the two major parties and the President generally is chosen in the first vote.
Yet this underscores another important point: The President of the United States was never intended to be primarily a representative of the People of the United States. The office is established in such a way that he represents the States, the electors being chosen by the States according to such permissible methods as each State chooses. Most States choose to vote as blocs: whichever candidate gets the majority of voter support within the state, that’s the candidate for which the state votes. The point is not for the voters to vote for the President; the point is for the voters to tell their individual States whom the State should support for President. The States then appoint the person wanted by the majority of the States, weighted by population.
And that is what happened here.
James Nolt wrote an excellent article in The Street (Pundits Just Don’t Get It: Here Is the Real Reason Why Trump Won), in which he observes that the “rust belt” states went to Trump. These are the homes of the manufacturing unions–steel workers, automotive workers–and they have seen their jobs vanish overseas. Trump promised to do something about it. These are the homes of struggling farm laborers, displaced by immigrant farm workers. Trump promised to do something about that. His plans sound radical–cutting back on the immigration of low-wage immigrants, placing high import duties on foreign manufactured goods–but they are plans that go against the status quo, that oppose the progressivist universalist concept of a world market where workers who have to pay American-level prices have to compete with workers willing to take third-world-level wages. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, West Virginia, the Dakotas–these states all want someone in Washington who will change the rules of the economy game so that ordinary working class people once again stand a chance.
I suppose that Bernie Sanders might have appealed to them with his socialist views. He was not an option. Trump was the only candidate in the race that supported policies that gave hope to those workers, and whether or not those policies are practical, whether or not they can be implemented, whether or not they would work, workers wanted to give him that chance.
What it means is that the Democratic Coalition is cracking: labor no longer believes the Democrats have their best interests in view. Support for more immigration is not in the interests of labor. Support for free trade agreements is not in the interests of labor. Republicans may have worked to break union strangleholds on jobs in some states, but Democrats have taken the union vote for granted while ignoring labor concerns, and now they’re losing it.
States where people want economic change, and not the more-of-the-same promised by the Democrats, voted for Trump. And the President of the United States is chosen by the States, the clear majority of whom (of fifty-one (which includes the District of Columbia) twenty-eight certain, one more still counting but probable, one of four votes from Maine) supported him. (Clinton took twenty certain, one more probable but still counting, and the other three votes from Maine.) Those States were heard. Trump is now President-elect, and we can hope that whatever he does will bring jobs back to America.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #130, on the subject of Economics and Racism.
When I was in law school, one of my fellow students explained to me how he got his masters degree by proving something everyone already knew. As I read a recent article, I couldn’t help thinking that the several cited studies were guilty of exactly that. They demonstrated that the prevalence of racism in a society is inversely proportionate to its economic health: as unemployment rises, so does racism. That doesn’t say that economics are the cause of racism, but that they are a contributing factor. I really hope that doesn’t surprise you.
It is inherent in our human existence that we want to survive. We see this survival instinct in creatures as low as cockroaches. Linked to that notion of survival is the desire for comfort and abundance–if we have better shelter, we are safer, and if we have more food, we are protected against hunger. Thus almost every one of us wants more than he has. That is not limited to poor people, or even middle class people–wealthy people usually find that there are things they want that they can’t buy. It is a phenomenon known as rising aspirations: the more money you have, the more things you want to buy with it. And it’s actually easy to understand why that is.
Economies fluctuate. They get better and worse. This happens globally, nationally, and even on the individual level. You have a job, and you make enough that you can afford to splurge on lunch out twice a week. Then you get a raise, and now you have more money. Now you eat lunch out three times a week. Your personal economy is booming. But then the price of bread goes up, there’s a new gas tax–the extra money is no longer extra, and you have to cut back to eating lunch out once a week. You feel like you’re going backwards, and in a sense you are. So is everyone else, of course, but you don’t feel the pinch on anyone else. You think you should have more than you have, that you should be able to eat lunch out three times a week, or even every day, because you work hard and you deserve it. You want to know why you aren’t doing better than you are.
You also think that your children should be able to do better, and your siblings, your family generally; and that sometimes extends to your ethnic group, particularly if you are in an ethnic group that has faced discrimination in the past–the Italians, the Irish, people who arrived in America poor and struggled in the working class to rise to a higher level. We deserve better, is the mantra. It extends beyond to “people like me”, and becomes contrasted against “people who are different”.
And what you see is that there are some people who are not part of your group who are doing well, doing better than you are. You are out of work, and these others have jobs. You are struggling to pay your bills, and these others have nice cars, nice houses, jewelry, meals at restaurants. They have it good.
It doesn’t matter whether most of those people who are not part of your group are in situations as bad or worse than yours; the fact that some of them are doing well means that those “different” people are getting the money, the food, the jobs, that “should” be going to you and your people–because you deserve better; and that means that people who have what you don’t have have taken it from you. It’s not fair, and it’s their fault.
And it is so comforting to have someone to blame, to be able to say to yourself that it is not your fault, not some deficiency in you. It’s because those Jews cheat to get ahead, or those Hispanics are taking all the jobs, or those Chinese are willing to work for a substandard wage.
Racism, seen thus, is our own attempt to view ourselves as better than someone else. The details are trappings, added to justify our judgments.
Thus when the economy is poor, when unemployment is high and money is not going as far as we remember, racism rises as we blame those who are different from ourselves for putting us in this situation. It doesn’t matter whether it’s whites deriding Hispanics for taking jobs at low wages, or blacks blaming whites as oppressing them and keeping them out of work, or Hispanics accusing blacks of mistreating them, or everyone blaming Jews for continuing to be successful in hard times. Our racist attitudes increase when we need someone to blame for our own hardships. Yet even if it is true that our economic hardships are not our fault, that does not mean they are someone else’s fault: economies fluctuate, and not everyone can be on the top of the curve. The fact that you are not reaching your aspirations does not mean it is anyone’s fault, even if it clearly is not your own.
It would be so much better if we could pull together and get out of this economic slump.
If only it were so easy.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #127, on the subject of New Jersey 2016 Election Results.
We provided some advance explanation of the two Public Questions which were on the ballot, and did a quick rundown of the major candidates in the twelve congressional districts, and now we’re following up with the election results. After all, with a lot of these events there is a great deal of coverage in anticipation of the moment, and then if you blink, you miss the outcome. That shouldn’t be.
In the Presidential race, New Jersey consigned its fourteen electoral votes to the loser, Democrat Hillary Clinton, as Republican Donald Trump won comfortably.
Map of New Jersey’s Electoral College vote, from Google, 3:00 Wednesday morning.
Public Question #1: Constitutional Amendment to permit casino gambling in two counties other than Atlantic County, went down hard, about four to one against. That means for the present casino gambling will be confined to Atlantic City, and the city will have to figure out how better to manage what it has.
Public Question #2: Constitutional Amendment to dedicate additional revenues to state transportation system, ran very close, but sometime after midnight had clearly passed by a narrow margin, under fifty-five percent of the vote favoring it. That means the state government will be forced to put the gasoline tax revenue into a dedicated account strictly for use by the Department of Transportation, which was the justification for the tax originally.
In the House of Representatives, all the incumbents were re-elected easily except in Congressional District 5, where Republican incumbent Scott Garrett was hurt by Libertarian Claudio Belusic in his race against Democrat Josh Gottheimer. The Libertarian’s two-point-two percent of the vote was the best of any Libertarian candidate in the state (Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson took two percent of the vote in the state, the best showing of any third-party candidate), but even apart from that Gottheimer would have edged out a victory, with fifty-point-five percent of the vote in his favor.
This tips the balance of New Jersey’s Congressional delegation, which for the past several years has been evenly split with six Republicans and six Democrats; with Gottheimer replacing Garrett we will be sending seven Democrats and only five Republicans to Washington. Nationally the Republicans still hold the House, with two hundred thirty-six seats, a few lost from their current majority. In the Senate, Republicans also lost one seat (in Illinois), but still hold a bare majority at fifty-one.
Here are the incoming United States Congressmen from New Jersey by district:
Donald Norcross, Democrat, Incumbent.
Frank Lobiondo, Republican, Incumbent.
Tom MacArthur, Republican, Incumbent.
Chris Smith, Republican, Incumbent.
Josh Gottheimer, Democrat, Newcomer.
Frank Pallone, Democrat, Incumbent.
Leonard Lance, Republican, Incumbent.
Albio Sires, Democrat, Incumbent.
Bill Pascrell, Democrat, Incumbent.
Donald Payne, Jr., Democrat, Incumbent.
Rodney Frelinghuysen, Republican, Incumbent.
Bonnie Watson Coleman, Democrat, Incumbent.
That gives us the shape of our Federal Government for the next two years.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #126, on the subject of Equity and Religion.
I saw an article online, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, entitled Amendment 3: A Stealth Attack on Religious Freedom The title intrigued me, since I had no notion of what was happening in Missouri, so I skimmed the piece–and was rather surprised at what I found. It struck me that the author did not have a very good grasp on exactly what “religious liberty” is, so I decided to pursue the matter here.
The purpose of “Amendment 3”, apparently Missouri’s version of what we in New Jersey now call a Public Question, is to create a cigarette tax and use the money to fund early childhood education. The tobacco industry has not made a lot of noise about it, at least directly–they have learned that people who smoke are very unlikely to stop simply because the amount of money they burn increases. It seems like a positive idea, that if people are going to kill themselves slowly at least they can help fund the education of our children.
At issue is text that says the disbursement of funds raised will not be limited or prohibited by the State of Missouri Constitution’s “Prohibition of public aid for religious purposes and institutions” clause. That means that if whatever method of distributing the money to help with preschool education would otherwise mean that a Lutheran- or Baptist- or Muslim or Jewish-run facility would qualify for some of that money, that facility is not automatically disqualified simply because it is administered by a church, mosque, synagogue, or other religious organization. Opponents of the measure say that this is an attempt to bring funding of religious organizations in through a side door, and so force people to pay for religious education with public money.
It is not at all clear that that is what this is, and in fact from the description it sounds rather as if it is an attempt, not to show religious preference, but in fact precisely not to show it. It is saying that the fact that a group of people trying to provide early childhood education happen to be believers of a particular religious philosophy will not disqualify them from being funded by this program–exactly what freedom of religion means, that we will not discriminate against you on the basis of what you believe. As long as the program is administered impartially, part of that impartiality has to be that a program is not disqualified based on religious connections.
That is important for multiple reasons.
Social programs and particularly education have always been spearheaded in the Anglo-Saxon world by Christians and Christian organizations. Our Ivy League colleges and many other schools and universities were originally founded by Christians to educate doctors, lawyers, and ministers. Christians were the first to attempt to help the poor in England through education of their children. In America, many settlers would arrive in a new location and build a church and a school as the fundamental institutions of society. Meanwhile, the Jews have long put a heavy emphasis on educating their children, going back more than centuries, possibly millennia–a Hebrew boy became a man by proving he could read from the Torah, at least as early as the first century. Religious people have been proponents of education, and education for all, even when the approved thinking was that education was for the privileged and powerful, to maintain their power and privilege.
Encouraging a group to do what we want them to do and they want to do anyway is good politics.
Besides, if the objectors are saying that it is a violation of the principle of freedom of religion to fund any organization that promotes a religious position, they’re going to have to stop funding public education as well. St. Louis is a particularly interesting case, as it is the home of the headquarters of the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church–not the most conservative Lutheran group, but conservative enough that they honestly believe in a six-day creation. You might disagree; I don’t know that I agree. However, whenever the State of Missouri uses its collected tax money to teach the scientific views about the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution, it is spending money to promote a religious idea–the idea that the Missouri Synod Lutheran belief in six-day creation is wrong. Our objectors say that they do not want their tax money spent to fund organizations that will promote religious notions with which they disagree; now they know how their Lutheran neighbors feel.
The only way to treat religious people and their organizations fairly is to make the question of religious belief irrelevant to the question of funding social efforts. Otherwise, it would be the same as saying that the government will not fund a day care run by a black man, or a preschool run by a woman. Not discriminating on the basis of religion means that religious views are not a factor in the decision. That’s what the amendment is saying.
How those programs are going to work has not yet been determined. The simple way, though, is for the government to provide scholarships or tuition reimbursement for needy families trying to send their children to whatever preschools are available. Some have argued that this kind of “voucher” system unconstitutionally funds religious schools because the parents can give the money to those schools and the government winds up paying the church, as it were. However, to do otherwise unconstitutionally discriminates against religious groups, requiring that parents send their children only to schools which reject religious views entirely–itself a religious view–or forego the government assistance they cannot afford to be without.
It would be akin to refusing to provide food stamps to any family that says grace before meals.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #125, on the subject of My Presidential Election Fears.
I mentioned (originally in #68: Ridiculous Republicans back in March, most recently this past week in #123: The 2016 Election in New Jersey) that this election was going to be about whom you vote against. A lot of people are afraid, very afraid, that one of these candidates will win–probably equally applicable to both candidates, and some voters are afraid of both. I have thought about it, and agree that there is reason to be afraid, but I think I am afraid of only one of them. So permit me a moment to explain.
I am not afraid of a Donald Trump Presidency.
I recognize that Trump presents a lot of bluster and arrogance. He is perceived as a buffoon, a cartoon, a joke. However, he probably has laughed all the way to the bank more than once. He is a successful businessman, with experience in the real world both nationally and internationally. He knows how to run a business, even several businesses.
The perception of Trump from the outside is that he will make many rash decisions. One does not become ludicrously wealthy by making rash decisions–bold, yes, rash, no. Rather, there are two things which someone successful in business learns very early, or he does not continue to be successful for long:
Hire experts who know their subject, listen to their advice, and follow it.
Hire executives who know their jobs, and let them do them.
This, incidentally, appears to be how Ronald Reagan ran his White House: surround yourself with people who know what they’re doing, and trust them to do it. I don’t say that Trump is another Reagan; I do expect that he would follow that same effective pattern. Presidents who think they know how to do everything and try to control it all are generally viewed as lesser successes–Wilson, Carter. Those who know how to obtain good advice and delegate important tasks and decisions prove to be the best executives–and the President of the United States is ultimately an executive, not different in kind from the president of a multi-national corporation.
I don’t know that he has always been completely honest, but I believe that he has avoided doing anything illegal, and I think that he means what he says even if he’s a bit dramatic at times. I think in those senses he is trustworthy. He might rattle the big stick quite a bit, but under the bluster he obviously has enough sense to make things work.
As far as some of his “crazy policies”, well, despite the nonsense our present President has tried with his executive orders attempting to end run the legislature, Presidents do not get to do whatever they want. I don’t see even a solidly Republican Congress rubberstamping his ideas, and I’m doubtful we’ll have a solidly Republican Congress. The laws that do get passed will be no more nor less ridiculous than those passed in the past, because we have a good system that works well in that regard. The legislative branch is totally independent of the executive, and has a fair amount of influence over executive appointments and actions, so there is a check in place for all of that.
I am afraid of a Hillary Clinton Presidency.
The simple reason is that I do not trust her. I believe that she lies to obtain power, wealth, and fame. I don’t see that changing simply because she gets it. There are serious concerns about whether she and her staff are guilty of treason in leaking classified information through carelessness–and while one might thereby excuse it because everyone makes mistakes, there are also serious allegations of influence peddling when she was Secretary of State. There is the potential that she will be indicted for any of these offenses before she can take the oath of office.
I do not want our President to be available to the highest bidder.
I do not want our President to lie to us about her intentions or her actions.
I do not want our next Supreme Court nominee, or appointee to the State Department, or any other government official to be selected from the short list of Clinton Foundation donors.
I have had enough of government corruption and overreaching with the present administration, and would like to see it ended. A Clinton Presidency would more likely escalate it. There is good evidence that she has lied, cheated, and stolen in the past, and no evidence that she will do otherwise in the future. I would prefer not to give her that opportunity.
I believe that we are all in God’s hands; that does not mean He will protect our nation. We will get either the government we need or the one we deserve. That might not be the one we like, but God knows what He’s doing. My fears might become reality, or they might be allayed; I might be wrong in my assessment of the dangers in either direction. However, I am going to vote against the candidate I most fear. We do not need a Democratic version of Richard Nixon.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #124, on the subject of The 2016 New Jersey Public Questions.
We previously gave a quick overview of the New Jersey Congressional candidates in #123: The 2016 Election in New Jersey, and promised to return with a look at the Public Questions, two issues on which the voters are being asked to vote. Both of these involve amendments to the New Jersey State Constitution, a popular topic for such questions since there are quite a few things that the constitution does not permit the state government to do without the immediate consent of the voters, many of them involving taxing and spending.
Public Question #1: Constitutional Amendment to permit casino gambling in two counties other than Atlantic County.
This appears to be a long-sought hard-fought compromise, and a bit of a history lesson is in order.
About forty years ago Atlantic City was dying. It had long been a vacation hot-spot and convention go-to, but was fading. Transportation had gotten cheaper and easier (despite the gasoline crisis of the seventies) so wealthy vacationers could easily visit Disney World. The Boardwalk had been overshadowed significantly by Great Adventure and several other theme parks in nearby Pennsylvania. Other tourist-dependent cities such as Las Vegas pushed for the convention business, and convention centers were springing up everywhere. Meanwhile, the originally pleasant locale was becoming a dirty, crime-ridden city where tourists weren’t always safe. The city had to do something.
Noticing that the state had made a lot of money running a lottery–the first concession to gambling as a legal activity beyond contests run by non-profit organizations–they pushed for permission to open a few casinos. At the time, Las Vegas was the only place within the United States where casino gambling was legal, and that was far enough away that an east coast establishment would be a serious competitor. There were a lot of concerns, including questions about organized crime, but ultimately the state agreed and approved casino gambling in Atlantic City. It was a huge success which significantly benefited the city, in no small part because the law stipulated that Atlantic City would get the lion’s share of the tax revenue from the venture to rebuild its failing infrastructure.
It is still debated whether in sum casino gambing has been good or bad for the city. Many of the jobs go to people in its suburbs. However, it has become an established part of the world, and many east coast states have followed suit, opening casinos on a limited basis.
Many New Jersey cities have wanted to have the same deal Atlantic City got, but Atlantic City and other southern New Jersey groups have argued against this. After all, the revenue from those casinos keeps the city afloat, even though it has been declining over the years as other states attempt to compete with them. Open casinos in Newark, it is argued, and northern New Jersey gamblers will save a few miles by going there; do the same in Camden, and the southern New Jersey crowd will be split. Another casino anywhere in the state will mean lost business for Atlantic City.
Two things are evident in the information presented on the ballot.
The less important is that no city within seventy-two miles of Atlantic City will be permitted to have a casino. That means that it is more than an hour’s drive between them, although it also means that some people will be within perhaps forty minutes of both locations. That distance excludes Camden; it excludes Jackson Township, home of Six Flags Great Adventure. It appears that it might permit a casino at the very tip of the western end of Salem County in Pennsville, but is intended to help the northern half of the state. Seventy-two miles might allow one in Asbury Park, north up the coast, Freehold, and of course just about anywhere north and west of that arc, including Trenton, Newark, and nearly all of what is called “north Jersey” by people who live at least as far north as Burlington County. (People who live down here by the Delaware Bay tend to think that Camden is in North Jersey–it’s clear up across the river from Philadelphia.) Clearly the new casinos are intended to benefit the northern half of the state at the expense of the southern half–which is why it was such a fight.
The more important aspect of the amendment is that a signifcant amount of the tax money raised by these casinos goes to Atlantic city for the next quarter century. This should minimize the impact of losses there, in what we might think the short term, and is undoubtedly the compromise there to reduce southern opposition. The total amount of revenue from casinos should increase, and the amount going to Atlantic City should also increase. The revenue is also intended for property tax relief for the elderly and disabled. There is also a provision to assign some of the money to aiding New Jersey’s horse breeding industry, for both thoroughbreds and standardbreds.
Of course, the host cities will also benefit from the increased tourism revenue–people who come to casinos also sometimes see the sights, eat in local restaurants outside the casino hotel, and otherwise spend money in the area. Property taxes on the hotels also go into local, not state, coffers, so there are significant benefits here.
The law apparently gives preferential treatment to those already operating casinos in Atlantic City; they have half a year to produce proposals for the new sites before bidding is opened to others.
There are quite a few who oppose the amendment, mostly because it is vague leaving too much to the legislature and giving too much influence to those running the casinos, although some have suggested that the present model for casinos in New Jersey is not working and expanding it to include northern locations will only complicate that.
The text of the amendment is available on Ballotpedia.
Public Question #2: Constitutional Amendment to dedicate additional revenues to state transportation system.
Remember that abrupt increase in the price of gas this past week? That’s the new tax passed a while back now coming on line. The government who raised the cost of gasoline did so because the Department of Transportation is, frankly, broke–they can’t afford to maintain the state-run roads and bridges and tunnels, and are facing serious layoffs. Tolls were increased on our few toll roads, but the revenue from that is relatively small next to the costs, and the limitations on the use of that money leaves a lot of roads in serious trouble.
The complication is that the government can authorize the tax, but not restrict the spending. They are now collecting more money on every mile we drive, and on the petroleum industry generally, which is going into the general budget. It can be used for transportation, but it can be used for anything else. Supporters of the amendment claim that this puts that revenue it into a “lock box” that goes directly to the Transportation Trust Fund, and so can’t be raided to pay for other programs (New Jersey governments have raided state trust funds in the past, only to find that money wasn’t there when it was needed.) The amendment also dedicates that part of the tax on diesel fuel not already bound to transportation to that fund.
Opponents have several arguments. One is that this Transportation Trust Fund doesn’t pay solely for roads and bridges, but also covers mass transit costs such as rail lines, and the government is hoping to spend a lot of money on those. It is also noted that a law has already been approved which permits the state to borrow a lot of money for transportation projects–about three times the anticipated revenue–if the amendment passes. As with Question 1, they say there are too many holes in the proposal, too many points on which the legislature would be given a lot more power than the voters anticipated.
It is also to some degree seen as asking the voters to endorse the recent 575% increase in the state gasoline tax–from four cents per gallon to twenty-seven cents per gallon. To be clear, that tax does not get rescinded if this question does not pass; it is merely a question of whether the revenue from it will be limited to use by the Department of Transportation or available for the legislature to use however it wishes.
It is also worth noting as an aside that the same law that authorized the gasoline tax also reduced several other New Jersey state taxes, including (in 2018) a slight reduction in the sales tax.
Again, the text of the amendment is available on Ballotpedia.
Although the arguments that the proposals are incomplete is a sound one, on balance Question 2 seems to be an important control on the use of the money from the gas tax, despite concerns that government officials have some pet transportation projects they want to fund from it. Question 1 is more difficult, but seems to be a reasonably fair compromise that should in the short term increase revenue to Atlantic City, help two as yet not selected northern cities, and resolve the long-standing conflict concerning casinos elsewhere in New Jersey.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #123, on the subject of The 2016 Election in New Jersey.
We are days from the quadrennial presidential election here in these United States, and I have, perhaps negligently, not written about the election at all since March. At that time I published Dizzying Democrats and Ridiculous Republicans,
a pair of articles in which I decried the nonsense happening in both parties and concluded with the words
…we are looking toward a highly polarized election which at this point looks like the exit poll question will be, “Whom did you vote against?”
(Those who follow this web log will already have guessed that I am far more afraid of Clinton than of Trump; those who do not follow my writing probably are not particularly moved by that.)
But even if it has not been negligent for me to have ignored this ludicrous Presidential race between the Jackass and the Snake (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which is whom), the fact is that the election is about more than merely choosing the next President of the United States. Here in New Jersey, at least, we are electing a dozen members of the United States House of Representatives, and have two significant Public Questions on the ballot. You can learn more than you want to know about the Presidential candidates anywhere; I owe you the opportunity to learn more about the local candidates.
After the brief assessment of the candidates, we have some thoughts about voting for people, for parties, and for third party candidates, that apply to everyone, so if you’re not from New Jersey (or you are and have found the information on your district) skip down below the numbered list and read that part.
Fortuitously, we provided sufficient coverage of the election of the current office holders in 2014, including the election results, and so it is simple enough to find your incumbent–and since probably your incumbent has been the familiar name bombarding you with political ads in your mailbox, you can work backwards from that to your district. It is a bit tougher to find the opponents, but with the aid of sites like Ballotpedia you can usually find just about any politician in the country and his positions on a wide range of issues. Here’s a quick rundown, with links to that site for more information.
In the First Congressional District, covering most of Camden and parts of Gloucester and Burlington Counties, Democratic incumbent Donald Norcross is defending his seat against newcomer Republican Bob Patterson, writer and lobbyist, along with three other third-party candidates including a Libertarian.
In the Second Congressional District, covering all of Salem, Cumberland, Cape May, and Atlantic Counties plus portions of Camden, Burlington, and Ocean Counties, Republican incumbent Frank Lobiondo is defending his seat against young Democrat Dave Cole, a Rutgers political science graduate who sought this seat in 2014 but lost in the primary, and against five other candidates including a Libertarian.
In the Fourth Congressional District, covering most of Monmouth and parts of Mercer and Ocean Counties, long-time Republican incumbent Chris Smith faces Democrat Lorna Phillipson, failed candidate for the New Jersey Assembly who was put on the ballot here when the winner of the Democratic primary dropped from the race, and by two other candidates one from the Libertarian party.
In the Fifth Congressional District, covering northern portions of Warren, Sussex, Passaic, and Bergen Counties, Republican incumbent Scott Garrett defends against Democratic newcomer Josh Gottheimer, a well-educated former (Bill) Clinton speechwriter and Microsoft executive. Again there is a Libertarian party candidate in this race.
Democrat Frank Pallone is the defending incumbent in the Sixth Congressional District, covering parts of Monmouth and Middlesex Counties, against Republican newcomer and small businessman Brent Sonnek-Schmelz, along with third party candidates from both the Libertarian and Green parties.
Republican incumbent Leonard Lance is defending his seat in the Seventh Congressional District, covering Hunterdon and parts of Essex, Somerset, Union, and Warren Counties, against Democratic newcomer Peter Jacob, union supporter from an immigrant family, and against both Libertarian and Conservative Party candidates.
Democratic incumbent Albio Sires defends in the Eighth Congressional District, covering parts of Bergen, Essex, Hudson, and Union Counties, against unknown Republican Agha Khan, and two others including a Libertarian.
Democratic incumbent Bill Pascrell defends his seat in the Ninth Congressional District, covering parts of Bergen, Passaic, and Hudson Counties, against Republican Hector Castillo, previous candidate as a Republican for New Jersey State Senate and as an independent for New Jersey Governor, and against two third-party candidates, one a Libertarian.
Democratic incumbent Donald Payne, Jr., continuing to hold his father’s seat in the Tenth Congressional District, covering parts of Essex, Union, and Hudson Counties, defends it against Republican David Pinckney, twice-failed candidate for the New Jersey State Assembly, and against two third-party candidates.
The Eleventh Congressional District, covering parts of Morris, Passaic, Essex, and Sussex Counties, has long been held by Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen, who is defending against Democratic newcomer Joseph Wenzel plus two third-party candidates, one a Libertarian.
In the Twelfth Congressional District, covering parts of Mercer, Middlesex, Union, and Somerset Counties, incumbent Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman defends her seat against former Libertarian now Republican Steven Uccio, failed candidate from both of those parties in several previous races, and against five third-party candidates including a Libertarian and a Green.
There is an argument in favor of voting for the candidate who best represents your views, regardless of his party affiliation. There is also an argument in favor of voting for the party that has the best chance to bring at least some of your views into action. Several of the candidates in various races this year are Greens, and quite a few are Libertarians, both parties representing some significant worthwhile positions–and yet their presence in the race actually decreases the probability that those policies will be enacted.
We have discussed the two-party system in our piece on Coalition Government, that particularly in Presidential politics but to a significant degree at every level elections are won by forming coalitions of disparate groups who can agree on a few policies they consider most important. The Democrats agree with the Greens on critical environmental issues, but the Greens feel that the Democrats do not prioritize these sufficiently; the Republicans similarly stand with the Libertarians on limited government, but the Libertarians believe that the Republicans do not go far enough in this direction. Yet every vote for a Green party candidate is one less for the Democrat who might have been elected and who would to some degree have supported Green policies, and every vote for a Libertarian is one less for the Republican who similarly might have advanced Libertarian causes.
The argument in the other direction is, of course, that the two parties which currently exist are not the original two parties, and over time coalitions dissolve and reform anew. Prior to the Kennedy administration the Republicans were the Civil Rights party and the Democrats the oppressors of minorities. Libertarians and Greens hope that they will attract enough support to become one of the two parties. Yet they are viewed as single-issue parties, and single-issue parties, again as we previously noted in The Republican Dilemma, fail to form the coalitions necessary to win elections. They work, generally, when a single issue has so divided the nation that many voters will support one side or the other above any other question and the two major parties have failed to take clear sides; but that is not the case in the present despite the severe polarization of our nation.
It is also worth considering that particularly in legislative bodies the party with the best representation often controls the procedural aspects of the agenda–a major advantage frequently that goes beyond what your individual representative can do. Thus if you prefer Republican policies but like the Democratic candidate, you should at least consider voting for the Republican you don’t like, because that will make it more possible for Republican policies to advance even if your representative does not support them entirely.
So with that advice, I encourage you to vote in this election, and promise to return before then with a look at the two public questions on the New Jersey ballot.
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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #120, on the subject of Giving Offense.
A couple days ago I was asked whether I had again offended a Specifically Named Person by writing another piece on homosexuality.
I had no idea how to reply to this. I was unaware that I had offended this individual previously by my writing; I have no reason to believe he identifies as homosexual. I obviously know that some people in my circle of relationships disagree with me on any subject you care to name, and this is one on which there are some significant disagreements–but I don’t keep track of who holds what positions on which issues, so I could not have told you that he disagreed with my views on this one. It does not surprise me if he does; I know he disagrees with me on some issues, but then, everyone disagrees with everyone on some issues. As the anonymous wise Quaker is quoted as having said to his closest friend, “Everyone’s a little queer ‘cept me and thee, and sometimes I’m not so sure of thee.” I know of no one with whom I am in complete agreement about everything. That does not bother me. After all, I know that everyone is wrong about something, and I know that that includes me, but it also includes everyone who disagrees with me. The trick is figuring out where you’re wrong and where you’re right, and not being more certain of it than you can justify.
What bothers me is that he would be offended by my opinion, or perhaps by my expression of my opinion.
I have probably written about tolerance before. Being tolerant does not mean not caring about an issue. It means having a strong opinion but treating others respectfully who hold a different opinion. Many people who are not religious believe that they are tolerant when they are actually indifferent and condescending. That is, their attitude is “all religious ideas are nonsense, so it really does not matter what nonsense you believe.” However, changes in society are forcing these people to recognize that this is not true–that it really does matter what one believes about God, because that in turn controls what one believes about many practical issues, such as abortion, homosexuality, and the “norms” of society. The criticism is that some religious people–those who disagree with the current attitudes on specific issues–are intolerant; the truth is that those who hold to those current attitudes are proving to be less tolerant.
Being tolerant does not mean that we all agree. It means that we agree to disagree amicably, and to allow each other to hold differing opinions, to live by them as our own beliefs dictate, and to discuss them openly. That’s all First Amendment: the absolute protection of religious and political opinion. Today those who hold certain viewpoints also hold the opinion that to disagree with those viewpoints ought to be criminal. We encounter it in the homosexual marriage debate; it is rampant in the environmental field; it appears in issues related to reproductive choice. If you do not agree with the approved opinion (whether or not it is held by the majority), you will not be tolerated.
On the specific issue of homosexuality, I agree that homosexuality is “natural”; it is as natural as heroin addiction: you can encourage it, and once you’ve got it you probably can never really be fully rid of it. There is sufficient evidence that homosexuality is not fixed in the genes, but involves environmental factors and choices on some level. The position that the unborn are as human as their mothers and deserve equal protection equal to that extended to their mothers–and probably then some, as they are the more vulnerable class–is certainly defensible. The issue of whether global warming is heading us into an environmental disaster, or whether it is instead staving off potentially disastrous global cooling and an ice age, can also be debated.
I hold some opinions which are apparently minority viewpoints, but I hold them honestly because of what I consider solid rational bases. To say “I am sorry if that offends you” is not really an apology; it is more an expression of compassion for your disability, that you are such a person as would be offended by the expression of an opinion with which you disagree. I think better of you than that. I respect you and your opinions, even, or perhaps particularly, where I disagree. I am willing to hear your evidence and your arguments. I expect only the same courtesy in response.
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A generalist: learning less and less about more and more, one day to know nothing about everything.
