Changes to the Democrat’s Abortion Plank

In an effort to bring pro-life, but overall moderate Catholics and evangelicals into the Democratic tent, the DNC is going to try and change their abortion plank at their convention. I have my doubts as to the success of this effort after reading the amended text:

Here’s the old language:

Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman’s right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

And here’s the proposed change:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre and post natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

As you can see, the new wording adds a couple lengthy sections that emphasize support for sex education, adoption and aid to women who choose to keep the child. This is what is intended to appease pro-lifers who have real trouble in voting for Democratic candidates, even when they agree on most other issues.

As stated above, I don’t think the DNC is going to fool anyone. The first line really says it all, “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion…and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”  How the framers think this will draw in any pro-lifers is hard for me to comprehend. The only wiggle room on the pro-life side is the ‘big three’ exceptions (rape, incest, health of mother). As stated above the DNC has no plans to limit abortion to those cases and giving lip service to adoption and sex education will not limit the millions of unwanted babies murdered each year.

I found an interesting piece by old-school feminist Linda Hirshman in  Slate. Like most feminists of her generation, Hirsman sees abortion as the holy grail of feminism and therefore any weakening of that right as akin to throwing all women back into the kitchen. (It is important to note here that Hirshman also once claimed on television that women who choose to stay at home with their children are wasting their lives.)

With the release of the new platform, and so long as the Obama campaign doesn’t cast the platform into purgatory and pick an anti-abortion candidate-like Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine-for vice president, the emancipation of women may once again become a legitimate political position. It is time to revive the moral argument for protecting a woman’s right to choose: Abortion is about the value of women’s lives.

Although her motives are only to prove her self-centered case that liberal ‘weakness’ has left the most important right women have (abortion) in peril, Hirshman actually reveals some good data regarding public attitudes towards said ‘right’.

About 20 percent of those polled believe abortion should never be allowed, and about 20 percent think it should always be allowed. About 60 percent think it should be allowed under certain limited circumstances.

If you unpack that crucial 60 percent, however, even these “centrists” only firmly support abortion in cases in which there is rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s life or health. Just over half of them support abortion in the case of physical or mental defects in the prospective baby. And when asked whether a woman should abort if she or her family could not afford to raise the child, the support for abortion drops to 35 percent.

At this point Hirshman returns to her roots as a me-centered feminist. She makes the arguement that pro-choice proponents have failed because they have failed to frame their position as moral. What are the morals, one might ask? Well it seems, according to Hirshman, that the right for women to prosper economically is a moral issue and abortion is the most effective defense against a child who would destroy that economic potential.

Women, whose economic prospects plummet with the birth of a child, now face 65 percent majorities who would support criminalizing their decision to abort because they are too poor for parenthood. Guttmacher Institute abortion numbers reveal that these same poor women are disproportionately black and Hispanic. It is fair to conclude that a lot of abortions, regardless of race, are about women seeking the flourishing life prospects that our current morality-free discourse completely conceals.

…

In the absence of a robust description of the value of women’s lives-their ability to develop their capacities through education, to use them to achieve economic independence and political citizenship, to take on only the relationships they can manage-there is no moral argument for their “choice” to have an abortion.

So the value of the life has been reduced to a matter of economics. And this is the side that Democrats are hoping pro-life folks will join? While Obama may win on charisma and Republican fatigue this year I am more convinced than ever that it will not be a vote in favor of liberalism.

 

Lowering the Drinking Age

An article in the Courier Journal discusses a proposal by some college professors to lower the drinking age to 18.

College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.

The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age.

“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

Other prominent schools in the group include Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.

It should not take a genius to realize this is a dumb idea. As the article goes on to suggest, this is not about unfair laws. What it is about is that universities have a problem with underage drinking. Some of their presidents seem to think the easiest solution is to lower the drinking age.

While we can argue the merits of drinking at 18 (anxiously awaiting the contradictions with voting and serving in the military) the real issue I take is that this will mean increased drinking among even younger kids, specifically high schoolers.

Most kids turn 18 sometime during their senior year of high school. Even at that age it’s not hard to find an older brother who will buy a few cases of beer for a weekend party. So imagine suddenly having half your classmates legally able to purchase alcohol. This will also trickle down to underclassmen who are friends with seniors. Local bars will be filled with a whole new batch of eager drinkers. The list of possible negatives go on and on.

If universities do not want to take responsibility for the underage drinking that goes on there, then the simplest solution is to end on-campus residency. Out-of-town students can live in local non-university housing and the issue becomes the exclusive dominion of local law enforcement.

I’ve talked before about how one of the jobs of conservatism, specifically progressive conservatism is to add some common sense to proposals for change. This is certainly one of those times.

Obama on Abortion: Part II

Ross Douthat of The Atlantic has a follow-up point on Obama’s lame-o abortion answer:

Andrew tries to defend Obama’s response to Rick Warren’s abortion question at the Saddleback Forum by suggesting that that the Democratic nominee was being asked about ensoulment, or the nature of conception. But Warren, to his credit, didn’t pose a metaphysical question, or a biological one. He asked a legal question: “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” Obama tried to dodge by saying that from a “theological perspective” or a “scientific perspective” the issue is “above his pay grade.” But Warren asked a more narrow question, and one that any politician who votes on abortion laws should be able to answer. And of course, as a supporter of Roe and Casey, Obama does have an answer: He thinks that a baby acquires rights when it’s born - well, perhaps depending on how and why it happens to be born - and lacks them at every juncture before birth. He just didn’t want to come out and say it.

American Ideals of European Transportation

Public transit and other alternative forms of transportation are two subjects I always wish I knew more about. On paper, I love the idea of things like light rail. With gas prices rising the thought of parking my car for most of the day and enjoying the morning paper on my commute sounds fantastic. Still, as promising as these solutions may sound many Americans cities have discovered that designing and maintaining a public transportation system that works and gets used can be very hard.

Even though some efforts have been less than successful mass transit is still a popular conversation topic among urban planners and many in the green movement. They often point to Europe as the model we should follow. New Geography has a short piece discussing the realities of transportation in Europe verses our American perceptions.

Tourists, journalists and urban planners are often smitten with what might be called the “Louvre Café Syndrome.” This occurs when Americans sit at Paris cafes in view of the Louvre and imagine why it is that the United States does not look like this. In fact, most of Paris doesn’t even look like this, nor do other European urban areas. Like their US counterparts, European urban areas rely principally on cars for mobility (though to a somewhat lesser degree) and their residents live in suburbs that have been built since World War II.

The last example of Louvre Café Syndrome comes from Washington Post Writer’s Group columnist Neal Peirce, who suggests that Amsterdam, with its bicycles, is the model for America to follow in a time of high energy prices.

Not only is this view incorrect, but Amsterdam is not even a model for the Netherlands. The largest urban areas of the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, have been “stuck in neutral” with respect to growth for at least 45 years. United Nations data indicates that since 1960, 97 percent of urban growth in the Netherlands has occurred outside these two large urban areas. While the population of the two largest urban areas has increased approximately 10 percent, the urban population outside these areas has increased by 120 percent.

And how do these urbanites that have chosen not to live in Amsterdam or Rotterdam travel? Try by car. Overall, in the Netherlands, approximately 85 percent of travel is by car — a figure that is nearly identical to the United States. All of the subway and light rail ridership in the Netherlands is less than the annual increase in car use. Some model.

Obama on Abortion

Asymmetric asks a simple and interesting question about Obama’s dodge on the abortion issue:

When Obama was asked about when life begins, the pro-choice candidate said that decision is “above my pay grade.”

Why is abortion above his pay grade, but not poverty, racism, marriage, military intervention and war and peace in general, AIDS, the environment, or any other moral question that he mentioned at the forum?

Is it because that one is split 50-50 in public polls and the others draw wide approval (People may be for military intervention in some cases or for drilling, but nobody would say that war is good and that trees are bad.)?

Obama Art

This weekend we attended the Kentucky State Fair (expect lots of pictures in the next couple of days). As we strolled through the art entries I was struck by an interesting phenomenon. Among the paintings I counted eight of Barack Obama. None of John McCain and none of any other living politicians. (There was one photo of Bill Clinton at the end).

I’m not sure what this says other than that my suspicions of a ‘cult of personality’ were somewhat reaffirmed.

Weird.

Driving Down College Costs

David Adams of Bluegrass Policy Blog makes a good point about college tuition in Kentucky:

Politicians with an interest in free-market solutions to the supply-and-demand issues in energy would be totally consistent in seeking to tamp down demand for the college experience in Kentucky. More than half of our college students enter unprepared to do college work. Very few of them survive long enough to do more than artificially inflate the cost of going to school.

If we really want to make college more affordable, rather than just to raise taxes for another well-intended project, we need to raise standards in high school and graduate better-prepared students.

Supply and demand dictates that as demand decreases so will costs.

We’ve spent the last 20 years convincing kids that the only way they can compete is with a college education. Meanwhile skilled professions like welders, machinists and electricians are desperate for help and paying fantastic wages. Is it wrong to suggest that some would be better off going the vocational route? 

At the same time those students who are interested in college need to be better prepared.

The New Deal: 75 Years Later

New Geography, a site affiliated with the esteemed Joel Kotkin, is running a fantastic series of articles looking back at the New Deal, 75 years later. It may surprise some regular readers to know that I have long been a fan of the New Deal and consider it to one of the greatest achievements of American government. In the coming weeks I will be devoting some time to the subject.

The first piece in the series by Kotkin himself makes some great points that I think both liberals and conservatives should be able to an agree on. The essay covers the broad implications of the New Deal and its greatest legacy of restored American confidence. It also points out that the New Deal was so important because it touched the lives of so many Americans and regardless of the costs, it was what America needed at that moment. I believe that we are at another one of those moments again and so it is fitting that we look backwards now.

A lot of my fellow conservatives think that the New Deal was one big entitlement program. They see its lack of success in ending the Depression and its legacies of Social Security and agricultural subsidies as unnecessary evils that drain tax dollars. I see it differently. I see it as performing a task that wasn’t written in the Constitution. It made the country believe in itself again.

In 1933 this country was short on confidence. Millions of American men were out of work, unable to provide for their families and feeling like the promise of this country was gone. At the same time much of the country was technologically closer to the 19th century than the 20th century. Our infrastructure was not broken, it just didn’t exist. So the government saw two needs and put its people to work. This was not welfare, it was workfare. From the NY Times:

For those expected to work, their strategy was to create jobs — not because requiring people to work for their public assistance benefits was necessary to correct shortcomings in the recipient population, but to preserve their dignity. Harry Hopkins, who headed the New Deal’s public relief effort, summed up their attitude: ”Give a man a dole and you save his body and destroy his spirit; give him a job and pay him an assured wage, and you save both the body and the spirit.”

The beauty of the New Deal works programs was that the country was filling a need (infrastructure) and also ensuring domestic security by putting millions back to work. These workers were also acquiring skills that would serve them well in later years. Workers were trained, improvements made and Americans once again started to believe in their country. I have said many time before that I do not believe we would have won World War II without the confidence rebuilt by the New Deal.

What are just some of the New Deal’s accomplishments? Let’s look at a brief list provided by Mr. Kotkin:

• 22,428 road projects
• 7488 educational buildings
• Over 7000 sewer, water and other public buildings
• Employed over 3,000,000 workers earning who helped support 10,000,000 dependents
• Employed 125,000 engineers, social workers, accountants, superintendents, foremen and timekeepers scattered in every state and community

I have spoken many times about the massive need for infrastructure improvements today. Even this deficiency is dwarfed in comparison with the state of our nation pre-New Deal. And in the span of just a little over a decade, all that changed. Much of the infrastructure we take for granted today was in fact built by the millions of workers given a job by New Deal programs. Many of our great cities, especially in the West, were given the tools to compete by New Deal workers.

In addition to the basic infrastructure needs of the country, ‘Federal One’ set about employing artists of all kinds. While I have lamented public support of the arts today, I believe that the targeted programs of Federal One were also just what America needed.  These programs created art that celebrated an idealized vision of America and their heavy reliance on art deco styles complimented a renewed national pride. It should also be noted that some of our greatest national treasures in the arts, such as Ansel Adam’s Mural Project were created as part of larger New Deal programs.

It is tempting to draw parallels between the New Deal and the needs of today and I will certainly entertain that in a second look at this opening piece tomorrow. But for today I think it is fitting to primarily look backwards and applaud the successes of the New Deal. Again, the words of Mr. Kotkin: 

The great genius of the New Deal lay not in ideology but in its pragmatism and practicality. People were out of work so it created jobs. The country’s infrastructure, particularly in the rural areas, was primitive, so it took on the task of modernization.

These two goals were the foundation of the New Deal and on both fronts, it was an amazing success.

 

Obama Receiving More Money from Military Than McCain

 

(Thanks to Political Wire for drawing our attention towards this report by Open Secrets.org.)

It seems that troops abroad have financially supported Obama by a margin of 6 to 1 over rival John McCain. This is astounding folks. It’s no secret that the military has long favored the Republican party and the overall contributions by party still seem to indicate that (59% to GOP) but when money donated to Presidential candidates is looked at in detail, Obama is the clear winner. This is over a candidate that is a war hero and seen as a strong voice on foreign affairs.

Despite McCain’s status as a decorated veteran and a historically Republican bent among the military, members of the armed services overall — whether stationed overseas or at home — are also favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008, by a $55,000 margin. Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel has gone to Republicans this cycle, of money from the military to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama.

Individuals in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps have all leaned Republican this cycle, but the only branch in which that ideology has carried over to the presidential race is the Marine Corps, where McCain leads Obama by about $4,000. In each of the other branches — including the Navy, in which McCain served when he was taken prisoner during the Vietnam War — Obama leads by significant margins.

“That’s shocking. The academic debate is between some who say that junior enlisted ranks lean slightly Republican and some who say it’s about equal, but no one would point to six-to-one” in Democrats’ favor, said Aaron Belkin, a professor of political science at the University of California who studies the military. “That represents a tremendous shift from 2000, when the military vote almost certainly was decisive in Florida and elsewhere, and leaned heavily towards the Republicans.”

While I am inclined to wonder if this signals a sea-change among military personnel, some expert are quick to caution drawing any major conclusions.

A former West Point professor, Jason Dempsey, noted that the small set of contributions from deployed troops at this point in 2008 — just 323 donations — should not be extrapolated to form conclusions about military personnel overall. “If, on a bad day, a guy gets that letter that says [his tour has been extended] from 12 to 15 months, that could spur a quick donation and expression of anger,” he said. “Donating helps members of the military express their political views privately.”

Seeing political activity of any sort among soldiers is notable, Dempsey added. “It’s hard to describe how apolitical a lot of the enlisted ranks are. He’s worried about other things than following the news.”

…

“One possibly mundane explanation (for the tilt in contributions from deployed soldiers) is that the Obama campaign has just been so much savvier with web-based donors. It may be a logistical question,” Belkin pointed out.

Narrowing the Skills Gap

The always-brilliant David Brooks has another great piece in the NY Times. This one discusses the short-comings in America’s education system and cites some interesting statistics that shed new light on how this affects us as a country.

He begins with what I would call a traditionally conservative position:

Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom.

He then goes on to reveal some historical figures that should give us all pause.

Between 1870 and 1950, the average American’s level of education rose by 0.8 years per decade. In 1890, the average adult had completed about 8 years of schooling. By 1900, the average American had 8.8 years. By 1910, it was 9.6 years, and by 1960, it was nearly 14 years.

As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school.

America’s edge boosted productivity and growth. But the happy era ended around 1970 when America’s educational progress slowed to a crawl. Between 1975 and 1990, educational attainments stagnated completely. Since then, progress has been modest. America’s lead over its economic rivals has been entirely forfeited, with many nations surging ahead in school attainment.

While many may see this lack of educational attainment as more proof that Europeans are more intelligent than us (see comment 8 here) the bigger issue is that it cripples our ability to compete. What is even more striking is the corollary between education attainment and inequality. Liberals typically attribute inequality to things like tax breaks for the rich, unfair business practices, blind devotion to capitalism, anti-unionism and the lack of a significant minimum wage. Brooks’ research seems to indicate a different cause, specifically the level of education attainment.

This threatens the country’s long-term prospects. It also widens the gap between rich and poor. Goldin and Katz describe a race between technology and education. The pace of technological change has been surprisingly steady. In periods when educational progress outpaces this change, inequality narrows. The market is flooded with skilled workers, so their wages rise modestly. In periods, like the current one, when educational progress lags behind technological change, inequality widens. The relatively few skilled workers command higher prices, while the many unskilled ones have little bargaining power.

The next likely jump in logic for many will be to blame the lack of educational attainment on failing schools, lack of funding and support from the government. Again Brooks’ research seems to indicate a different cause.

The meticulous research of Goldin and Katz is complemented by a report from James Heckman of the University of Chicago. Using his own research, Heckman also concludes that high school graduation rates peaked in the U.S. in the late 1960s, at about 80 percent. Since then they have declined.

In “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman probes the sources of that decline. It’s not falling school quality, he argues. Nor is it primarily a shortage of funding or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman directs attention at family environments, which have deteriorated over the past 40 years.

Heckman points out that big gaps in educational attainment are present at age 5. Some children are bathed in an atmosphere that promotes human capital development and, increasingly, more are not. By 5, it is possible to predict, with depressing accuracy, who will complete high school and college and who won’t.

I.Q. matters, but Heckman points to equally important traits that start and then build from those early years: motivation levels, emotional stability, self-control and sociability. He uses common sense to intuit what these traits are, but on this subject economists have a lot to learn from developmental psychologists.

The globalization of the world economy has certainly affected some workers, specifically in industries like agriculture (internationally) and manufacturing (domestically) but for a third time, Brooks’ research seems to buck the conventional wisdom. He argues that American workers do not need the government to reorganize the economy, but instead they need to narrow the skills gap. This is a Progressive solution I have advocated in the past. 

Second, there is a big debate under way over the sources of middle-class economic anxiety. Some populists emphasize the destructive forces of globalization, outsourcing and predatory capitalism. These people say we need radical labor market reforms to give the working class a chance. But the populists are going to have to grapple with the Goldin, Katz and Heckman research, which powerfully buttresses the arguments of those who emphasize human capital policies. It’s not globalization or immigration or computers per se that widen inequality. It’s the skills gap. Boosting educational attainment at the bottom is more promising than trying to reorganize the global economy.

Brooks closes with a correctic assesment that the Democratic party is now best positioned to champion this cause. For better or for worse they have been seen as a partner to labor for many years and their policies have attempted in the past to address shortcomings in human capital.

Third, it’s worth noting that both sides of this debate exist within the Democratic Party. The G.O.P. is largely irrelevant. If you look at Barack Obama’s education proposals - especially his emphasis on early childhood - you see that they flow naturally and persuasively from this research. (It probably helps that Obama and Heckman are nearly neighbors in Chicago). McCain’s policies seem largely oblivious to these findings. There’s some vague talk about school choice, but Republicans are inept when talking about human capital policies.